


The Gray Light of Dawn

by sinead_smith (smac89)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/F, F/M, M/M, Original Character(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:35:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21948181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smac89/pseuds/sinead_smith
Summary: He entered the temple expecting to die. He'd made his peace with his past, ready to find redemption in sacrifice. He held her in his arms and breathed life back into her body. He was ready.The Force, apparently, was not.Now, his abilities shackled and the Dyad bond broken, he is forced onto a journey of self-discovery, attempting to make amends for the blood he shed. Pushed to his limits and helped by unexpected allies, he begins to reclaim the person he was before Kylo Ren.His name is Ben Solo.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 42
Kudos: 97





	1. Against All Odds

She was exhausted, and he was too heavy. He was just so much taller than her, and all dead weight. She only managed to drag him a few feet before her legs gave out underneath her. She knew he was gone, but she couldn’t help pressing her shaking fingers to his throat again.

Cold. Still. Absent of life. She could no longer sense his presence in the Force.

She could not leave and bring his body with her. Even if she could move him, the X-wing could only carry one person. She would have to leave him behind, in the ruins of the Sith temple. It was the last place she wanted to lay him to rest, not after what he’d done for her, what he’d sacrificed.

But she had no choice. Large chunks of the ceiling broke loose at random intervals. She couldn’t stay for long. And the Star Destroyers were still falling from the sky; getting off the surface of the planet was going to be tricky enough.

So she left, tired, utterly spent, her ears full of whispers of masters long dead, urging her on, faster, to flee the cursed place. She had no tears to cry, no energy left to mourn. Just a deep, empty ache somewhere in her midsection.

She reached the ancient X-wing and managed to pull herself into the cockpit with trembling muscles, shoving the helmet over her head and wincing when it abraded the wound on her forehead. Numbed fingers punched controls without her conscious command, and the X-wing rose into the air.

How she made it out of the atmosphere through the debris raining from the sky, she was never sure afterward. But somehow she had black space and distant stars ahead of her. She entered the coordinates by memory. 

She fell asleep as soon as she was in hyperspace.

xXx

He couldn’t tell if he was awake. He was surrounded by darkness so deep he wasn’t sure if his eyes were open or closed. It took him several minutes to realize that he was breathing.

He wasn’t dead.

How unfortunate.

The pain returned a moment later. His whole body burned with it, but especially his leg. It was probably broken. He didn’t have the strength to drag himself far. How ironic, to survive all this only to die alone in the dark.

He  _ was _ alone, wasn’t he? He reached out slowly with one hand, feeling the stony ground beside him. Nothing. He listened, but heard no other breathing. He was utterly, truly alone.

He deserved this, he told himself. To die alone and forgotten. Unmissed. Unmourned. No one would look for him. There was no one left who would care to. Mother, father, uncle. All gone. All dead. And all because of him.

The darkness seemed filled with his regrets. The lives he destroyed. Planets he enslaved. All his grand dreams, his great plans, all brought to this.

He laughed, dry and rasping and dying immediately in his throat. How quickly everything changed. One minute he planned to rule the galaxy. The next he was choking on his own blood, a hole through his chest from the lightsaber he built. And in that moment, as he died on the wreckage of the Empire’s last and greatest defeat, he saw all that he had done, all that he had worked for, crumble into nothing. It was worth nothing. He would die, and no one would care. On the contrary, many would celebrate.

But he didn’t die. The woman that he had spent the last years hunting, who he had tortured, battled, and threatened, she didn’t let him die. She had every reason to hate him, to leave him to die and be swept away by the ocean. She saved him, and called him by his name.

And then everything was different.

At least, in the end, he had done one thing that mattered. One thing that he could cradle his hands around like a tiny flame, to warm himself until the darkness finally consumed him. He wouldn’t fight it, wouldn’t try to hold on.

It was time. He was ready.

He faded in and out, but for how long he couldn’t tell. There was no sense of passing time in the darkness and silence. Each time he regained consciousness he was weaker. Each time he drifted off he hoped it would be the last time.

Fate would not be so kind.

He woke, again, to pain and darkness. But this time he could hear voices. Distant, muffled, but definitely coming closer. Then he saw lights; hand beacons flitting around the wreckage, searching. He couldn’t call out. He didn’t have the strength.

The lights and voices continued to come closer, into the main chamber of the temple.

“...Nothing here. It’s some kind of amphitheater. There won’t be any tech.”

“It’s a sith temple. There might be artifacts or something.”

“We should be harvesting the Star Destroyers, not poking through rubble for bones.”

“Who said anything about bones?”

“You were talking about artifacts.”

“I didn’t say anything about--wait. What’s that?”

“What? Where?”

“There. There’s someone over there.”

“Leave it. They’re probably dead.”

“We should probably check.”

“This is a  _ sith temple _ . It’s probably a  _ sith _ .”

“Or it could be a rebel fighter.”

“In which case we would have to give them a share of the haul. No. Leave it alone.”

A beacon flashed over him and he flinched involuntarily away from the light. “It’s definitely alive!” A dark, shadowy figure knelt down beside him, shining the beacon in his eyes again. He turned his head away from the brilliance, intolerable after so long in the dark.

“Hey, buddy. Can you hear me? You understand Basic?”

“I  _ told _ you to leave it alone.”

“I’m not leaving it here to die, Arla!”

There came a frustrated sigh from somewhere above him, and heavy footsteps away. A gloved hand patted his cheek, and pulled his face back towards the light. “Hey. You awake in there? Can you open your eyes? I don’t have a medical scanner. You gotta tell me where it hurts.”

He cracked his eyes open, trying to focus on the owner of the voice. The light angled away from his face, thankfully, and he could make out the being kneeling over him. It was a Twi’lek, completely covered save for their lekku, a face mask obscuring their features.

“There you go,” the Twi’lek said. They put the hand beacon down and pulled a flask from their belt. They carefully lifted his head up and pressed the mouth of the flask to his lips. The water was cold and tasted clean. He gulped greedily, trying to soothe the dry rasp of his throat.

“Not too fast,” The Twi’lek warned. “You’ll make yourself sick. Can you talk? Can you tell me where you’re hurt?”

He swallowed, trying to summon his voice, and only managed after a great effort. “Leg,” he wheezed. “I think…broken.”

“Okay,” The Twi’lek said. “We have an emergency medical kit back on the ship. I’m gonna run back and get it. Don’t try to move, okay?”

He nodded and let his eyes drift shut again. The Twi’lek’s footsteps faded into the distance, and then returned much sooner than he expected. He opened his eyes. It was not the same Twi’lek who had tried to help him.

This one was taller, bulkier, wearing only goggles instead of a full mask. They knelt down beside him and used the hand not holding the beacon to pat him down. They found nothing. He had taken nothing with him to Exagol, nothing but the burning need to find her, to redeem himself.

“Guess you really are hurt,” the second Twi’lek said. “Who are you? Who did you fight for?”

He licked his dry, cracked lips. “Ben,” he wheezed. “Ben ...Solo.”

The Twi’lek pulled a datapad from their belt and tapped at it for a few seconds. “Well, Ben Solo, it doesn’t look like you’ve got a bounty on your head. Lucky you. Technically you’re entitled to a share of whatever we haul off this rock.” They tucked the datapad back into their belt.

“Eena is a bleeding heart,” they told him. “She’ll want to patch you up and take you with us.” They sat back on their heels. “But if you put one toe out of line, I’ll flush you out the airlock, understood?”

He nodded. The threats didn’t scare him. Not a lot could scare him right now.

The first Twi’lek, Eena, returned moments later, a large pack over her shoulder. “Arla,” she snapped. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure your new friend isn’t some kind of criminal,” Arla retorted.

“You’ll have to ignore her,” Eena said to him. “She’s paranoid.” She opened the pack and pulled out a hypospray. “It’s not much but it’ll take the edge off.” The anesthetics acted quickly, and the burning pain faded to a dull ache. The sudden relief was enough to plunge him back into unconsciousness.

xXx

He was warm when he woke up. He lay on his back on a soft surface. His throat was still dry but the pain that had wracked his body was now distant and quiet. He was surrounded by a faint hum. Ship electronics. But the deeper thrum of sublight engines or the bass rumble of hyperspace was absent. They were still on Exegol.

He opened his eyes, unsure of what to expect. He was lying on a bunk in crew’s quarters, covered in a blanket. His boots had been removed, but no other clothing, thankfully. His leg was in a splint, and his ribs had been wrapped over his shirt. He tried to sit up, but the rigidity of the rib brace kept him on his back.

He considered calling out, to see if anyone could hear him, but he decided there was no point. He was completely at the mercy of these scavengers. He was utterly spent and broken, inside and out. He could not have defended himself even if he wanted to.

The door to the quarters hissed as it slid aside. Eena, he thought. She stepped into the small room carrying a tray. She was no longer wearing a face mask. Her skin was a deep shade of purple, almost black, and she had white slave tattoos on her lekku. Her eyes were red, almost pink, and when she smiled at him, he could see her teeth had been filed to points.

“You’re awake!” she greeted. “We were getting worried about you.”

“How long was I asleep?” he asked, his voice rough with disuse.

“Three standard days,” Eena replied. “I’ve pushed you with nutrients every twelve hours, but it still looks like you’ve lost some weight. You had a few cracked ribs as well as the broken leg. But you’re all patched up now and all you need to do is rest.”

“Are we still…” his voice trailed off.

“On Exegol?” Eena finished. “Yes. We still have a little room in our hold and Arla wants to make the most out of this trip. A few more scavenger crews showed up while you were out and she wants to get a head start on the market.”

She helped him sit up and propped his back against a cushion so she could set the tray in his lap. “It’s not much,” she warned him. “Just some tea and broth. But I figured your stomach might not be able to handle much more.”

The tea was hot and flavorless, but it soothed his throat. The broth was also hot but had an unfamiliar flavor. Eena watched him drink with concerned eyes.

“Arla said your name was Ben?” she asked. He nodded and took another drink of the broth. His stomach cramped, but he wasn’t sure if it was in hunger or protest.

“How did you end up in the temple, Ben?” Eena asked. “I heard the battle took place in the air.”

He cleared his throat. “I went to help my… friend.” He hesitated over the right word. “Friend” did not seem to encompass the true scope of what she meant to him. Even before he threw his lightsaber into the ocean, she was… everything. Every waking thought. Every dream. Just everything.

Eena frowned, but then nodded. “Well, you finish that up and I’ll check in on you later.” She turned to leave.

“Who won?” He asked before she could disappear. 

She turned back. “What?”

“The battle.” He pointed vaguely skyward. “Who won?”

She smiled faintly. “The Rebellion. They won. The First Order is gone.”

It felt like a punch to his chest. Gone. Defeated. So many years spent fighting to crush the Rebellion, wiped out in a single battle.

Good.

He was tired. So tired. Of the fighting, the violence, the war that raged in his head. He just wanted to rest. All of the hate and rage that had fueled him the last years was gone, leaving him hollow. 

He should be dead. He had followed her to Exegol expecting to die and he’d been at peace with that. Surviving was an inconvenience.

The scavengers finished that night, and Eena came to tell him that they were leaving. He didn’t ask where they were going. He didn’t care. Nothing mattered. Not anymore. His family was gone.  _ She _ was gone. Whatever bond had tied them together was silent now. He had lost everything. He had nothing left to live for.

He slept while they were in hyperspace, the familiar rumble of faster than light travel like a soothing lullaby. His dreams were dark, formless, until a soft voice pierced the fog.

_ Ben. _

He stirred in his dream. He felt weak, sluggish. His tongue was heavy and stuck to the roof of his mouth.

_ Ben. _

_ “Mom?” _ he whispered. It couldn’t be. His mother was dead. He felt her die. But it was her voice all the same.

_ Ben. You’re not done. Not yet.  _

_ “I’m so tired,” _ he protested.  _ “I just want to rest.” _

_ Don’t waste this. Don’t waste your life. _

He didn’t have an answer for her. His dream shifted, becoming bright, full of sunshine and colors. Warmth, humid air. The smell of vegetation and overheated ship engines.

“He saved my life.”

His chest tightened at the sound of her voice. A ravenous  _ need _ erupted from deep within him. He needed to see her, to feel her presence through the Force. But when he reached out for her, he fell short, her image flickering like a faulty holo. 

“He died. He saved my life, and he died.”

She was alive. She was alive and  _ he _ had saved her. He brought her back from the brink of death, pouring his own life force into her until she began breathing again. She was alive because of  _ him _ .

_ “Rey.” _ He hadn’t meant to call her name. He didn’t deserve her attention, her consideration. He deserved nothing from her. But the raging hunger in his gut ignored that. In a single moment it consumed him. Nothing else mattered. He would live, yes, but only to become worthy of her. It would take a hundred lifetimes to pay for his sins, but he would try.

He needed her more than he needed breath. Without her, he was truly dead.

xXx

The scavenger’s ship was old and not in the best state of repair. With the hull full of Star Destroyer pieces, they could only run the hyperdrive a few hours at a time, with long periods of rest in between. Eena brought him another simple meal and told him it would take them two days to reach their destination, an Outer Rim system called Ademus. He’d never heard of it before.

He ventured from the cubby hole that passed as crew’s quarters out of sheer boredom and a need to escape his dark thoughts. He found himself in the main area of the ship, with bulkheads that led to the cockpit and the galley.

Eena sat at a small round table in the corner, scrubbing tiny mechanical parts with a dirty rag. A few tools sat at her elbow, but she looked frustrated and confused. She looked up when he stepped into the common area.

“Ah! Look who’s up and about. How’s that leg?”

“Fine,” he replied shortly. It still hurt, but between the anesthetics and the brace, he could walk on it. “What are you doing?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure this thing is some kind of deep-space communication relay repeater, which would be very valuable if it worked, but it’s so carbon-scored I tried to clean it, and now I can’t get it back together.”

He lowered himself onto the stool opposite her and extended his hand. She gave him a wary look and gave him the component she’d been holding. He turned it over in his hand a few times, ignoring the black smears it left on his fingers.

“You’re not wrong,” he told her. “It’s a valuable part. But it’s not a relay repeater. It’s an encryptor.” He offered it back to her.

She didn’t take it, staring back at him with her head tilted. “How do you know that?” she challenged.

He shrugged. “I used to work on my… my dad’s ship when I was a kid. It was an old piece of crap. Needed constant repairs. He was a smuggler before the war and he had a lot of illegal upgrades.” The thought of his father was… complicated. Painful, certainly. But there was anger there below it.

Eena blinked a few times. “That’s the most we’ve gotten out of you, I think.”

He grimaced and put the component down.

“I didn’t mean that in a bad way,” Eena said quickly. “I just… You seem a little lost.”

He swallowed. He didn’t particularly want to share his life story with her. He’d rather not talk to anyone at all right now. But she’d treated his wounds and gotten him off of Exegol, so the least he could do was be courteous.

“My family’s gone,” he said tersely. “In the war.”

Eena nodded slowly. “I’m sorry,” she said. She picked up a hydrospanner and held it out to him. “You know how to fix this thing?”

He took the tool from her. “Yeah,” he said. “I can.”

The familiar work of repairing ship parts kept his hands busy and his thoughts occupied. Eena didn’t try to engage him in conversation again. She occasionally brought him a new part to repair. He didn’t realize how much time passed until Arla appeared from the cockpit.

“What is he doing?” she demanded.

He startled at the loud question, dropping the tool in his hand. Arla stood a few paces away, her hands on her hips and a scowl stamped on her features. She was taller than Eena, almost as tall as him, with pale green skin and black eyes. She wore a sleeveless tunic which displayed bulging biceps ringed with black and blue tattoos.

“He’s been helping me,” Eena replied calmly. “He’s very good at fixing things.”

Arla sneered. “He doesn’t need to be messing with the haul.”

“Well, he’s entitled to a share of it,” Eena pointed out. “There’s no harm in him earning it.”

“We don’t know a thing about him,” Arla snapped. She strode forward, reaching for the tool on the table in front of him. He reacted before he could stop himself, responding to the perceived threat. He grabbed Arla’s wrist as he lunged to his feet, twisting her arm until she was forced face-down onto the table.

“Ben!” Eena yelled, lunging towards them.

He realized what he’d done an instant later and released Arla, stumbling backwards. He tripped on his injured leg and fell hard on his ass.

“The  _ frag _ do you think you’re doing?” Arla snarled, cradling her arm.

“He didn’t mean to, Arla,” Eena said soothingly, coming up behind Arla and resting her hands on Arla’s arms. “You scared him, that’s all.”

“He’s fragging dangerous,” Arla’s eyes burned with anger and she pulled away from Eena’s touch. “I want him off my fragging ship.”   
  


“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t… I’m sorry.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Eena said reasonably. “There isn’t a system for parsecs. We can’t just kick him out in an escape pod.”

“Why not?” Arla demanded.

“Because we are  _ good people _ ,” Eena said firmly. “And we don’t hurt people unless we have to. Look at him. He’s been through a great tragedy. He’s hurting. And you scared him. Once we reach Ademus, he can go on his way.”

Arla bared her teeth. She had had her canines replaced with black metal fangs. “Keep him out of my way or I’ll blast a hole in his skull.”

A day ago, such a threat would have met an immediate and violent response from him. But today he couldn’t summon up anything more than a deep sigh. Arla stomped out of the common area back into the cockpit.

He struggled to his feet. “I should go,” he muttered.

Eena didn’t argue. “You should get cleaned up though,” she suggested. She showed him where the refreshment chamber was and even offered him a clean shirt and pants that he guessed belonged to Arla. “It’s a water shower,” Eena told him apologetically. “It’s an old ship and we never got around to upgrading. Water’s reclaimed, so I don’t suggest you drink it.”

“It’s fine,” he said shortly, and accepted the clothing. His smelled of sweat and blood and smoke, torn and singed from battle. It would be good to feel clean again.

He had to remove the rib wrap and leg brace so he could undress, and he left them off to shower. He could balance on one leg for a few minutes. The water didn’t get much hotter than lukewarm, but it was a relief to scrub his skin until it turned bright red, as if he could cleanse away the memory of the Emperor reaching towards them with rotting fingers, sucking the very life out of them.

He stayed under the modest spray perhaps too long, but there were clots of dried blood in his hair and he had to work each one out with his fingers. He’d always worn his hair long, almost to his shoulders. He wondered if it would be better to cut it. He dismissed the thought. Cutting his hair would do nothing to make him less recognizable. Any remnant of the First Order would be able to identify him on sight.

There was a battered, dented mirror fixed to the wall of the chamber. He caught sight of his reflection and paused, momentarily transfixed by the scar that ran from his hairline to his chin. He traced it with one finger. She’d given it to him, the first time they battled. He could remember it with crystal clarity, every second, every move she made. It had been exhilarating, the first time he’d faced a challenging opponent. That was the moment she became the center of all his thoughts.

He’d thought he hated her. He’d thought he wanted to crush her, dominate her spirit. It turns out that’s not what he wanted at all.

He caught his own gaze in the mirror. His mother’s eyes, now sunken and bruised. He turned away, filled suddenly with disgust and anger. He didn’t know why, after everything he had done, that his mother had been willing to give her life just to reach out to him. She had burdened him with her death, and part of him hated her for it, as he hated his father. Hatred was easy. It could be nursed. It could sustain him. Hate could drive him. Grief was nothing but a paralytic.

He left the rib wrap in the refreshment chamber but strapped the brace back on his leg. He limped back to the bunk he’d been given and collapsed face down. He was unconscious again in seconds.


	2. New Beginnings

He woke when the ship lurched so far starboard that he was dumped unceremoniously from his bunk. He landed hard on the deck, a jolt of pain shooting down his leg. He cursed under his breath, foul words in the ancient Sith language he’d learned under Snoke’s tutelage.

The vibration from the engines felt… wrong. It was gasping and uneven. Before he pushed himself back to his feet he knew what had happened. He limped out of the crew’s quarters and headed towards where he imagined the engine room would be.

Arla stood in the airlock to the engines, her back to him. He could hear Eena’s voice over the coughing of the engines, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. Arla looked over her shoulder and her expression darkened.

“What the frag do you want?” she demanded.

“The engine--” he began.

“Yeah, we know,” she snapped. “We’re working on it.”

“It’s the sublight reaction core coil,” he said, but she’d already turned away from him again.

“The sublight engines are overheating!” Eena yelled. “I can’t get it to shut down!”

“Well try harder,” Arla yelled back. “Or we’re gonna be space dust in a few minutes.”

He limped forward a few more steps. “It’s the sublight reaction core coil,” he said louder. “You need to re-route the charge through the--”

“Yes, thank you, we  _ got _ it,” Arla growled at him without looking around.

“This has never happened before,” Eena wailed. “The reaction core is too hot and the cooling system is not responding.”

“Because you need to re-route the charge through the secondary system and purge the engine until it cools back down,” he said doggedly.

Arla finally turned to face him, her hands balling into fists. “We  _ don’t _ need your help,” she snarled at him. Behind her in the engine room he saw Eena’s head pop up out of a gap in the deck.

“Wait,” Eena called. “What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Alra replied through gritted teeth.

“No, he said something about re-routing the charge?”

“Re-route the charge through the secondary system and purge the engine,” he said again, raising his voice so Eena could hear him. “The reaction core coil is damaged.”

Eena disappeared back below the deck, leaving Arla fuming at him. He set his feet and crossed his arms, glowering back. The engine hum kicked up an octave, coughed twice, and then returned to normal pitch. Eena popped up once more, a triumphant grin on her face.

“It worked!” she announced, and climbed out of the crawlspace. “How did you know how to do that?”

“This is an Andorian Y2-class freighter,” he replied. “Reaction core coil failure is a common issue.”

Eena shouldered past a furious Arla, wiping her greasy hands on an equally filthy rag. “You know a lot about ships?” she asked. “You work on them a lot?”

He shrugged. “It’s in my blood,” he said.

Eena nodded. “You know how to fix the reaction core coil?”

“Can’t be fixed,” he said with another shrug. “This fix might last two, three hours.”

“Alright, then, smart guy,” Arla sneered. “How are we supposed to make it to Ademus?”

“You have a hold full of ship parts,” he pointed out. “I’m sure you can find something to cobble together long enough to make planetside.”

Eena elbowed Arla. “He’s right,” she said cheerfully. Arla growled, a wordless expression of frustration, and stalked back towards the cockpit, slamming her shoulder into his as she passed. Eena didn’t seem bothered.

“Help me look,” she instructed, and waved him to follow her.

The cargo of scavenged parts had been, thankfully, organized into stackable crates, divided between scrap metal, wires, and engine components. They each took a side and started working towards the middle. His leg began to ache before the end of the first hours but he pushed on. He was good at ignoring pain.

“Ben!” Eena called, her voice echoing in the hold. “Ben, will this work?” She bounded through the stacks of crates towards him, holding a thick coil of metal and circuits in her hands. “It’s a reactor coil, isn’t it?”

He took it from her and turned it this way and that. “It is,” he confirmed. “This is from a TIE fighter, though. It’ll get you to Ademus but not much further.”

Eena didn’t look too disappointed. “It’ll probably put us back a bit, but we should still turn a profit, even considering your share.” She nodded toward the part in his hand. “You know how to install that?”

He frowned. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’ve never done it before.”

She beamed up at him. “Great! We can learn together. And if we get it wrong, we’ll blow up!” She took the coil back from him and all but bounced out of the hold, leaving him to stare after her.

There was very little space under the deck where the sublight reaction core cooling system ran. At a height of almost two meters, there was no possible way he was going to fit. Instead, he was forced to lie on his stomach with the upper half of his torso hanging in the crawlspace while Eena handed him tools.

The awkward position made his cracked ribs burn, but he endured the pain stoically. He really didn’t care if the ship blew up and took him with it, but something told him that  _ she _ would want him to at least  _ try _ to help the two Twi’leks.

“So…” Eena began after a few silent minutes. “What did you do? Before the war?”

He grunted. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. He just wanted to replace the damn coil and retreat back to his bunk. He was pretty sure Eena wouldn’t be impressed with the truth if he told her. 

“I was a student,” he muttered. “Just a kid.”

“Oh,” Eena said, startled. “You must be a lot younger than I thought. I’m bad at guessing ages. Especially Humans.”

“Insulation tape,” he said shortly. It appeared a moment later beside his head.

“You fought in the war?” Eena pressed.

He ripped off a section of tape with his teeth and carefully wrapped it around a section of wires he had spliced. “Did you?” he retorted from between clenched teeth.

“I couldn’t,” Eena replied. “These tattoos aren’t for decoration. Arla bought me off my owner and freed me about a year ago.”

He frowned. That seemed to be a lot of effort to get a crew member. “Why?” he asked, despite himself.

He heard Eena sigh. “Love,” she said dreamily. “She sold my owner scrap at a loss for three years just so she could see me.”

_ What a waste _ , was his first thought.  _ Love was a weakness. _ But he held his tongue. The Dark lied to him. He would not repeat its lies to someone else.

“What about you?” Eena asked cheerfully. “Can you tell me about your friend?”

The responding surge of emotion in his chest caused sparks to burst from the wiring he had  _ just _ patched together. Tiny points of burning heat sprayed across his face and he growled a curse so foul that it would make one of the Knights of Ren blanch. He held out a hand toward Eena. “Tape,” he demanded.

“Is something wrong?” Eena asked, sounding concerned.

“No,” he replied shortly, and finished insulating the exposed wires.

“You don’t have to tell me about them if you don’t want to,” Eena offered.

The thing was… he  _ did _ . He wanted Eena to know how incredible Rey was, the fury of her conviction, her sheer force of will. She was as bright and terrible as a young star and he, a dark planet, could not help but orbit her, even at the farthest reaches. 

“She hated me when we first met,” he said quietly. “We fought constantly.” Not technically a  _ lie _ , not really the truth.

“It’s like that sometimes,” Eena agreed. “What’s her name?”

He finished installing the coil and pushed himself out of the crawlspace, wincing when his damaged ribs protested. He rolled over and sat up. Eena stared at him, entranced by even his brief story. “Rey,” he said. “Her name is Rey.”

Arla appeared at the airlock, her usual scowl stamped on her face. “Are you done?” she demanded.

“Yes,” he told her, wrapping his arm around his ribs in a vain attempt to ease the growing ache. “It’ll take you to landfall but not much further.”

Her scowl grew. “Great. Well, at least we’re not going to blow up.” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “I made something other than flight rations while you were busy. If you’re hungry.” She extended her hand towards him, palm up. It took him a moment, staring at her empty hand, to realize she was waiting to help him to his feet. He forced himself to take her hand. She hauled him up with surprising strength.

“Get something in your belly,” she told him curtly. “After that I got a few more things for you to look at. You might as well earn your room and board.”

He stayed busy for the rest of the trip digging into the guts of the ship, searching out the various repairs Arla claimed it needed. Most of the so-called repairs were little more than a little welding and a little insulation. He suspected Arla was trying to keep him out of her way and occupied, but he didn’t complain. Keeping his hands busy kept his thoughts quiet.

They made landfall on Ademus just after local sunrise. He followed Arla and Eena down the gang ramp, as Arla loudly proclaimed that she didn’t trust him alone on the ship. It was an underworld space port, full of smugglers and criminals. The war barely touched places like this. In fact, during wartime, they prospered.

Eena tugged on his sleeve. “Come on,” she said. “Arla’s going to do the haggling and it’s best we stay out of her way.”

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To get you something to wear, and then a drink. Arla likes that shirt. She wants it back.”

He looked down at the garment. It was deep gold color, nothing he would have chosen for himself. It was smudged with grease and carbon from his work. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Eena patted his arm and it took everything in him not to flinch away. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get you dressed.”

“I don’t… I don’t have any money,” he said. He had never had a need for money. As a child, his mother had been an honored diplomat. He had wanted for nothing. At the Jedi Academy there was no need for currency. And with the First Order, he had just taken what he wanted.

“We’ll take it out of your cut of the haul,” Eena told him. 

Eena, it turned out, was horribly picky. When they arrived in the garment district of the market, she flitted from stall to stall, rubbing fabric between her fingers and tutting disdainfully. He trailed after her, bemused and self-conscious. He towered over most of the crowd and, while he was quite used to being the tallest person in the room, he wished now that he was not so noticeable. There was no telling how many First Order sympathizers were at the marketplace.

“Ben!” Eena called, breaking him from his thoughts. “Over here.”

He trudged over to join her at a stall that was little more than a hovercart piled high with second-hand clothes. Eena held up a maroon shirt for his inspection. He didn’t care at all what he wore, but he humored her by feeling the fabric. It was surprisingly thick and strong. It’d be warm on long space journeys.

“It’s fine,” he said.

She beamed up at him, pleased he approved her choice, and threw the shirt over her arm. She dug into the pile again.

“For you? For you?” the trader asked in broken Basic. She was a gray-skinned Neimoidian, dressed in layers and layers of what looked like rags, her eyes clouded and dim with age. She peered myopically up at him. “Tall. So tall.”

“How about these?” Eena asked, pulling a pair of patched leather trousers free.

“No, no,” the trader protested, waving her arms. “Not that. Shit. He need nice things. So tall. So handsome.”

The attention made him acutely uncomfortable, but he summoned a smile for the tradeswoman. She crouched down, disappearing behind her wares, and appeared with a folded stack of clothing. She offered them to him. “I save. Very nice. For you. Handsome boy.”

His cheeks flushed and he ruthlessly suppressed the boyish reaction. An old woman’s words shouldn’t affect him this way. He took the items from her unfolded them. There was a caf-colored pair of leather trousers that was as soft as bantha butter, and a heavy, reinforced tunic in a deep, sapphire blue that was covered in pockets and straps.

Eena reached out to stroke the leather hand sighed. “I’m sorry, grandmother. We don’t have the money for this.”

The old woman cackled dryly. She pointed at Eena. “You stay. Watch cart. You. Handsome boy. Come.” She picked up a gnarled wooden cane and beckoned him to follow before tottering down the street. For a moment he was frozen in place, unsure of what was going on. The old woman couldn’t possibly be a threat to him, so he quickly caught up with her and followed her around the corner and to a low door. She pushed the door open and gestured for him to enter.

He reached out with his senses without thinking, seeking out life forms or dangers inside. But when he felt the Dark Side swell within him he cut himself off from the power. He would rather not use the Force at all than to open himself up to that power again. So he gritted his teeth, braced himself, and ducked into the dark room beyond.

It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust. The chamber as a single-room domicile, furnished with a tiny cook-top, a table with two chairs, and a single sleeping pallet in the corner. The floor was hard-packed dirt, the walls lined with clay to keep out the heat and the sun.

The old woman tottered in behind him, tapping his legs with her cane to get him to move out of her way. She stopped by the sleeping pallet and pointed upwards with her cane. He went to look at what she was trying to show him.

The roof of the hut slanted sharply, the lowest point by the door and the highest over the sleeping pallet. As he squinted upwards, he saw where the straw-reinforced clay had begun to crumble, creating a hole in the ceiling.

“There, there,” the old woman said, shaking her cane at the hole. “You fix, yes?”

A bubble of rage rose in his chest, that this feeble old creature would expect  _ him _ , once the Supreme Leader of the First Order, to perform such a menial task. His fist clenched and he imagined crushing her puny throat.

He took a deep breath. He unclenched his hands.

“I don’t know how,” he told her. “I’ve never fixed anything like that.”

She cackled and pointed to the darkest corner of the room. Upon investigation, he found several bricks of dried clay, a basket full of straw, and a jug of grayish water.

xXx

Eena was worried when he returned, the old woman in tow. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “You can’t just disappear like that.”

Ben looked down at his hands. He’d tried to clean up with what was left of the water, but there was still clay under his fingernails and in the wrinkles of his knuckles. “She needed help patching her ceiling,” he replied. “There was a hole.”

Eena frowned in confusion. “And it had to be  _ you _ to help her?” she asked.

The old woman cackled again and tapped his legs with her cane. “Tall boy,” she told Eena. “He reach.”

Eena blinked a few times. “So… you wanted him to fix your ceiling in exchange for the clothing?”

The old woman bobbed her head. “Good trade. Keep sun out. You take, you take.” She shoved the stack of clothing into his hands again. “Handsome boy. You wear well.”

He nodded at her. “Thank you, grandmother,” he said quietly.

They met Arla in a dimly-lit tavern where all the servers were droids, including the bartender. Arla sat at a booth in a corner that had a good view of the only door. There were already three drinks on the table.

“How’d it go?” Eena asked, sliding in next to her partner.

Arla gave him a hard look as he sat down, painfully aware that he now had the entire bar full of probably-criminal patrons at his back. “It went pretty well, actually,” Arla said, still staring at him. “With all of the functional parts we had, we got a better price than I expected.”

Eena clapped her hands with excitement. “Does this mean we can get an actual cooking unit instead of our crappy old hot plate?”

Arla gave her an indulgent look. “Maybe,” she said. She leaned forward and slid a makeshift cloth bundle across the table towards him. “Your cut,” she told him. “Minus your room and board.”

He took the bundle and pulled the cloth aside, finding himself with a handful of smuggler’s credits. The value in the coins was not in what they represented, but what they were made of: precious minerals from many different systems.

The credits were enough to purchase transport to another system, but not much more. He didn’t know what to do with them. For the first time in his life, he was completely at a loss. He had no guidance. No plan. He was adrift.

Something of his emotions must have showed on his face, because Arla, still leaning forward, propped her elbows on the table. “Here’s the deal, Solo,” she said in a firm voice. “You saved me a lot of credits with the repairs you did around my ship. You’re pretty good at that. A lot better than Eena.”

“Hey!” Eena protested, but chose to sulk rather than argue.

“Anyway,” Arla continued, rolling her eyes at her partner. “Your expertise could be valuable.”

His hand tightened over the credits. “What are you saying?” he asked in a low voice.

“I’m  _ saying  _ that if we need to pay for less repairs to the ship,  _ and  _ if we get a bigger payout from more functional parts, I think we can afford to bring on a third crew member,” Arla said.

“Really?” Eena gasped, clasping her hands together in front of her mouth. “You really mean it?”

“ _ If _ Solo agrees,” Arla told her. “He may not want to work with scavengers after fighting in the war.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” he said in a low voice.

“I know you’re not an idiot, you’re not currently wanted by bounty hunters, and you know your way around a ship’s engines,” Arla retorted. “That’s enough for now. If you get to be more trouble than you’re worth later, we’ll kick you off the ship faster than a blarrg can bite off your fingers.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Eena said quickly. “I’m sure you want to go find your friend.”

He did. More than anything. He was fairly certain he knew where she would go. But not yet. He wasn’t ready to face her. The cavernous hunger in his chest stirred angrily at that. But he still had so much Dark left in him. She would reject him, as she had all those times before.

He shoved the credits into his pocket. “I’m in,” he said.


	3. Healing Is Not Linear

As it turned out, he wasn’t bad at scavenging.

Arla gave him a crash course on how to use a plasma torch and a stern warning not to break it, or burn himself. He kept her warning in mind as he worked to free a bundle of arm-thick cables from the protective casing. The cables were made of a valuable, super-conductive metal, and, according to Eena, would fetch a high price when sold by weight.

He wasn’t afraid of heights, which proved valuable as both Eena and Arla were. He found himself about sixty meters off the ground in the guts of a First Order star destroyer that had fallen to the ground in the Er’kit system. He wore a magnetic harness that protected him from falling, but he was confident in his ability to reach the ground safely if the harness failed.

He cut through the first layer of casing and turned off the torch, using his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Er’kit was a desert planet, and the wreckage seemed to trap and amplify the heat. He’d spent most of the last ten years in controlled climates. He had no resistance to heat. Eena had insisted that he slather his exposed skin with UV-protect. 

“So pale,” she’d tutted at him. “You’d think you never spent any time outdoors.”

He unclipped the canteen from his tool belt and took a few careful sips. It was a long climb down and then a ten minute trek back to the  _ Blue Horizon _ for more, so he didn’t want to run out. He adjusted his goggles and turned the plasma torch back on.

There were two more layers of protective casing before he got to the cables. Arla had instructed him to collect as much of the conductive metal as possible. That was his only goal for today. He clipped the plasma torch to his belt and pulled out a vibrosaw. It was a highly specialized, expensive tool. Arla had threatened him with death and dismemberment if he lost or damaged it. Her threats were amusing because he could sense no malice behind them.

The easiest way to collect the cable metal was to slice it into portable chunks. He carefully began his first cut. Sparks flew from the saw blade, landing harmlessly on his tunic. Once he’d cut through the cable he prepared to make the second cut. Halfway through the cable, the vibrosaw sputtered and bucked out of his hands.

“Karking hell,” he spat. Without thinking, he reached out a gloved hand and halted the tool’s fall with the Force. The rush of Dark Side energy was as heady as Hapes wine. For a moment he reveled in it, allowing it to fill him with strength, soothing away all his various aches and pains. Then he remembered himself.

He gritted his teeth and shoved the Dark away, closing himself off from it. The saw began to fall again, spinning lazily as it continued downwards. Muttering another curse under his breath, he reached out and grabbed hold of it once more. This time he kept the intoxication of the Dark Side at bay, sweat dripping down his face. He lifted the vibrosaw until he could reach it with his hand, and then cut off his connection to the Force.

He hung against the harness for several minutes, panting, his legs shaky. He felt drained of energy, exhausted. If this was what it was going to be like trying to resist the Dark Side, he did not have a very favorable view of his future. He removed his goggles and wiped his face on his sleeve.

The comm in his ear crackled faintly. “Ben?” asked Eena’s concerned voice. “You alright? I thought I heard you yell?”

He cleared his throat and swallowed. “I’m fine,” he said shortly. “Almost dropped the saw.”

“You do that and you’ll be  _ walking _ back to Ademus,” Arla growled.

“I’ve walked further,” he replied flatly, and felt mildly rewarded when he heard Eena giggle. He replaced his goggles and allowed himself another sip of water.

When he returned to the  _ Blue Horizon _ at dusk, he had seventeen disks of metal to add to the clutter of ship parts partially filling up the hold.

“How much more of the cable is accessible?” Arla asked as she weighed the disks.

“A little less than a meter,” he replied with a shrug. “I wouldn’t be able to get to the rest without a lightsaber.”

Arla gave him a strange look but didn’t say anything. “I’d like to get the rest of it, if you’re up for another day off the ground.”

He shrugged again. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Arla rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know how much longer we have until other crews get here. I’d like a full hold before we leave, but if other crews get wind of this wreck we might get pushed out before we’re done.”

He drained the last of his water. “No, we won’t,” he said simply.

She glared at him. “And what makes you think that?”

“I won’t let that happen,” he assured her.

“Right. Because you’re gonna hold everyone off single-handedly,” Arla scoffed. “We scraped you up off the ground less than a week ago.”

The corner of his mouth curled up. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“Uh-huh.” Arla patted him on the shoulder almost fondly. “Ok, tough guy. Go shower before you eat. Humans smell like rotten fritha fruit when you’re sweaty.”

xXx

After showering and wolfing down three portions of flight rations (to Eena’s mock-dismay), he returned to the hold to help Arla sort through the parts they had gathered that day and repair what he could. Arla wasn’t much of a conversationalist, and he wasn’t in a talkative mood, so it was quiet until Eena’s worried voice came over the intercom.

“Arla? There’s someone approaching the ship.”

Arla made a face. “How many someones?” she asked sourly.

“Um…” there was a moment of brief silence. “Six.”

“Great,” Arla muttered under her breath. She crossed the hold and slapped the control for the loading ramp.

“You’re going to confront them?” he asked.

“The last time I ignored another scavenging crew, they tried to blow up my ship,” Arla replied peevishly. “Best to keep them where I can see them.”

He sighed and got to his feet, tucking his hydrospanner into his toolbelt. Arla headed down the ramp and he followed, stopping halfway down to asses the situation.

The six strangers were of various species. He saw a Weequay and a Zabrak and his stomach sank. Judging from experience, this was not going to end well. Those particular species seemed to thrive on conflict. He crossed his arms, willing himself to look his most intimidating.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” Arla asked casually, wiping her hands with a rag.

The Weequay stepped forward, puffing his chest out. “You can clear out,” he growled. “This is our wreck now.”

He didn’t need the Force to sense the tension visible in Arla’s bare shoulders. “According to the law, no one crew can lay claim to a salvage site if all parties have valid salvage licenses,” she drawled.

“That was the law of the New Republic,” the Weequay replied, his hand resting on the butt of his holstered blaster. “The New Republic is gone. There are no laws now.” He tapped his blaster. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll clear out without any trouble.”

It took a flick of thought to disable the trigger mechanism of the Weequay’s blaster. He knew better than to try the other five; it had been a long time since he’d attempted anything that small and precise. He was not a man known for subtleties.

“I’ve got to make a living like anyone else,” Arla said. “And this is a mighty big wreck. Seems like there’s plenty for both of us.”

The Weequay snarled. “You’re lucky I’m willing to let you go with what you’ve already picked. Keep arguing and I might change my mind.”

He didn’t like their odds. Neither he nor Arla had were armed. And even if he had a blaster, he wasn’t that great of a shot. He hadn’t used a blaster in over ten years, and his education on them had been cursory, at best. With the Weequay disarmed, he could focus on the Zabrak, but he’d have very little time to disable them before the others attacked. He hoped Arla was good in a fight.

“How about this,” Arla suggested. “We’ll stick to the debris field to the south and leave the main site for you. That way we won’t get in each others’ way.”

The Weequay drew his blaster. “Are you deaf, tail head?” he growled. “I said, get the kriff out of here!”

He didn’t wait for Arla’s response. He lunged forward from the middle of the ramp, hitting the Zabrak in the chest, knee first. They landed on the hard, dry ground hard with an audible  _ snap _ as the Zabrak’s ribs cracked. He slammed his fist into the Zabrak’s face to make sure he stayed down.

Instinct made him dodge to the side as a blaster bolt sizzled by his ear close enough to singe his hair. He threw himself into a side roll and came up in a crouch behind the shooter. He swept the shooter’s legs out from underneath him and ripped the blaster out of his hands as he fell.

By this time the Weequay had discovered that his blaster was no longer functional and charged him with a roar, raising the broken blaster like a club. He had a good eight centimeters and 25 kilos on the Weequay; he used the blaster in his hand to smash aside the Weequay’s and slammed his elbow into the other’s throat.

He took a second to assess the situation and saw the two remaining armed attackers on the ground, conscious but injured. Arla struggled with the alien that he had disarmed, and finally got him into a headlock. The alien clawed at Arla’s face with sharp nails, but she didn’t relent until he went quiet and still.

Arla got to her feet and brushed her hands together. “You’re bleeding,” she said brusquely.

He blinked, turning his awareness inward to search for an injury. It wasn’t until he lifted his hand to his face that he felt the line of fire across his cheekbone. His fingers came away bloody.

“Don’t worry,” Arla said. “It won’t scar. Not like that one you’ve already got.” She looked down and kicked the closest unconscious body. “There’s some cord in the tool kits on the right side of the hold.”

He nodded and turned toward the gang ramp. “Solo,” Arla called. He stopped and looked back. She nodded towards him. “You’re good in a scrape.” He smirked, the first time since Exegol that he smiled at all.

Eena joined them as they bound the hands of the hostile crew. She hovered worriedly around him with a bottle of antiseptic spray and a synthflesh bandage until he finally remained still enough to allow her to treat the wound on his face.

A couple of their prisoners snarled threats at them, but he kicked each one in the head every time they tried, and they eventually stopped. Eena winced whenever he did, but she didn’t protest. Once everyone was secure, Arla came to stand next to him, her arms crossed over her chest.

“So. You were a soldier,” Arla said without looking at him. “What do you suggest we do with them?”

He raised his eyebrows. He knew what  _ Kylo Ren _ would have done with the prisoners, but he was fairly certain Arla would not agree to that. He’d gotten to know her over the past few days, and despite her surly exterior, she really was a good person.

“I wasn’t a soldier,” he said quietly.

Arla turned to study him with a frown. “Then what were you?” she asked.

“I was…” He struggled to find the words. “Highly specialized,” he said finally. 

“Commando, huh?” Arla said with a nod. “Still. You have to have some kind of idea.”

“We can’t keep them,” he said, deciding not to correct her further. “We don’t have the manpower to guard them around the clock. And they’ll definitely try to escape.”

One of the other salvagers, a Duro, spat something in their native language. He pressed his lips together and chose not to tell Arla what the alien had said about her possible future offspring.

Arla narrowed her eyes. “So,” she said slowly. “What do we do?”

He ran his tongue along his lower lip and discovered that it had been split at the corner. He must have been hit in the face with shrapnel from the Weequay’s blaster. He hadn’t felt a thing. It didn’t matter. He was used to pain and the taste of blood in his mouth.

“How much longer will it take to fill the hold?” he asked, pressing his thumb to the small wound.

Arla gave him a dubious look but answered anyway. “Three days. Maybe two, if we haul ass.”

He eyed the prisoners one more time. “Take them out into the desert. About a hundred kilometers. It’ll take them about two days to walk back to their ship.”

“Won’t they die without water?” Arla asked, trying not to sound concerned.

He shook his head. “Give them their fill of water now. It’ll last them until they get back. They won’t be in great shape, but they’ll live.”

Arla nodded in agreement. “Alright. That’s what we’ll do.”

Eena was not happy with the plan, especially when he bluntly told her their only other option was to kill the prisoners in cold blood. He knew he hurt her with his harshness, but it was the truth. There was simply no way they could contain six prisoners for three days with just the three of them.

Eena helped him give the prisoners water. Most of them drank sullenly, aware that they had no choice. The Weequay, however, spat the water back in his face. A surge of black fury seized him at the insult and the Dark whispered sweetly to him, telling him to crush them like an insect under his heel, to set an example so no one ever dared to cross him again.

He distantly heard someone calling frantically, a name he almost, but not quite, recognized. His pulse crashed in his ears, the drumming drowning out any other sounds.

An image swam across his vision, a young woman strapped to a chair, strands of spice-brown hair sticking to her forehead with sweat, her face a grimace of fear, eyes averted from his.

_ Rey. _

The memory was enough to shock him to stillness. The feeling of her terror, once so intoxicating, repulsed him now. She had been afraid. He had  _ made _ her afraid. He had reached into her mind without permission, without consideration, and tore her memories apart to get what he wanted.

She was right. He was a monster.

He returned to his senses abruptly, momentarily blinded by the bright sun. He blinked rapidly, trying to adjust his eyes.

“Ben!  _ Ben! _ ” Eena was calling his name, tugging on his arm.

He had the Weequay by the throat, the salvager choking in his grasp and feet kicking the air weakly. He cursed and dropped the alien. His breath came in ragged gasps. Eena knelt down to check on the Weequay, who coughed and wheezed, his beady black eyes staring hatefully at him.

“I’ll fragging kill you for that,” the Weequay growled. “I’ll find you, and I’ll cut your kriffing throat.”

He swallowed, clenched his teeth together, and whirled around, stalking back up the gang ramp. Sweat dripped into his eyes, causing them to sting and water. A large, misshapen sheet of metal stood upright in the back of the hold. He slammed his fist into the metal, uncaring that his knuckles were bare. Rage and shame battled in his chest. He felt as if it would tear him into pieces.

He punched the metal again, and again, a scream ripping from his throat. 

_ He was a monster.  _

**_He was a conqueror, a force of nature_ ** _.  _

_ He didn’t deserve to live.  _

**_Anyone who stood against him would be destroyed_ ** _.  _

_ He was a murderer.  _

**_He was born to rule._ ** __

_ He was nothing but ruin and death.  _

**_The throne was his birthright._ ** __

_ She hated him. Rey hated him.  _

**_She belonged to him._ ** __

_ She killed him. She ran him through with his own lightsaber.  _

**_He would make her fear him, make her submit._ **

“ _ NO _ !” He screamed at the voices raging in his head and slammed his fist one last time into the metal. He staggered back, sweat dripping from his face. The metal was dented and smeared with blood. His hands throbbed with pain. He looked down at them. His knuckles were swollen and split, blood oozing between his fingers. He could see yellow slivers of bone in one or two places.

The rage was gone, leaving him with only the shame, exhausted and spent, his stomach hollow.

“You okay?”

He whirled around at the sound of the voice behind him. Arla leaned against a stack of crates, pretending to be occupied with examining her nails. She didn’t look at him, didn’t appear to care if he answered. For a moment he couldn’t find the words to speak, couldn’t decide whether to lie or not.

“Not really,” he finally rasped.

“Mmm,” Arla said, sounding uninterested. “Should probably have Eena look at your hands.” She pushed away from the crates and walked down the gang ramp. He realized that she had been there the whole time, watching him. Perhaps to make sure he didn’t hurt himself any worse than he already had.

That thought made a strange emotion coil through his chest.

xXx

Two bones in his left hand were broken, and three of the fingers on his right were fractured. Eena said nothing as she washed out the wounds and dressed them. He refused to wear splints. He’d broken bones in his hands before. Some accidental, some not. They had always healed straight, thanks to the Force. He refused pain tablets as well and thanked Eena curtly before going to take another shower.

By the time he was dressed, Arla had taken the enemy scavenging crew out to the desert, dropped them off, and returned to the wreckage site. He left the ‘fresher and started to head back to his bunk, but when he crossed the main area he paused. Arla sat at the table, her long legs stretched out and propped up on a stool. She had a tall, dark blue bottle on the table in front of her, and two small glasses. When he caught her gaze, she invited him over with a nod.

He reluctantly joined her, lowering himself onto the remaining stool. Arla reached over and poured a viscous, purple-black liquid into each of the cups. She pushed one towards him. He eyed it suspiciously.

“What is that?” he asked, his throat still raw.

“T’amtúk,” she replied. “It’s very rare these days. It’s made from tamtam root, from Ryloth. The plant was almost wiped out during the Clone Wars. You only find it in greenhouses these days.”

He frowned down at the liquor, not wanting her to see his face. “You should save it for special occasions.”

“I save it for when it’s needed,” Arla said. She dropped her legs to the ground and leaned her elbows on the table. “I’ve lived through three wars,” she continued. “I’ve seen what they do to planets. To people.” She grimaced. “It leaves scars. And not all of them are as visible as that one on your face.”

His frown turned into a scowl. He didn’t need a lecture. He just wanted to be left alone. But something kept him there at the table.

“People hurt in different ways,” Arla went on. Her tone was soft, matter-of-fact. She wasn’t accusatory in any way. “Some people get better. Some people don’t.” She picked up her glass and rolled it, watching the movement of the thick liquid. “Don’t be the person that destroys themselves,” she instructed, and tossed the liquor back. She got to her feet and moved the bottle closer to him.

“Don’t kill my bottle,” she told him, and headed toward the cockpit.

He didn’t look up from the liquor in his glass. His gut roiled. The t’amtúk smelled like overripe fruit and green grass. He raised the glass and took a careful sip. It tasted like thunder and burned like fire down his throat. He coughed a few times. He had never been much of a heavy drinker. He hated feeling as if he was not fully in control. But now, numbness seemed preferable to the deep pit of shame and self-loathing in his stomach.

The drink went down easier on the second sip, and even easier on the third. By the time he finished his glass it had stopped burning. He felt warm and relaxed, his senses fuzzy around the edges. He poured another few mouthfuls into the glass, mindful of Arla’s warning. The flavor was sweet, now, and lingered on his tongue.

He secured the top of the bottle and pushed to his feet. The deck tilted for a moment before his balance stabilized. He managed to return to his bunk without falling. He considered the cramped cot for a few moments longer than necessary before he decided he didn’t want to fold himself into the short bed. Instead, he pulled the mattress pad, blanket, and pillow onto the floor and stretched out.

He dreamed of Rey.

_ She burned, nova bright. The darkness could not touch her. Fire and smoke wreathed her as she ran through chaos. She wielded a beam of yellow light in one hand and the Force in the other. Others followed her command, soldiers advancing against the enemy. He had never seen anything more beautiful. _

_ “Rey.” He reached for her desperately, but their bond, once as strong and bright as beskar, now barely held them together, frayed and weak. He still pulled with all his might. “Rey.” _

_ She faltered, her attention wavering. She hardened her resolve. Her soldiers depended on her. She must lead them, protect them, guide them. She could not afford distraction. _

_ “Rey,” he pleaded. He needed her, needed to fill that empty place in his soul that she had left behind. “Rey, please.” _

_ She saw him now, distant and indistinct. “Ben?” _

_ His name sounded like music in her voice. She  _ saw _ him. She could reach him. _

_ But instead she pulled away, drawing into herself. _

_ “No,” she said flatly. “You’re dead.” _

_ And then she was gone. _


	4. The Search Begins

When they returned to Ademus, Arla decided to have him accompany her to the salvage yard for negotiations. “Eena’s crap at haggling,” she told him. “And you look like a bruiser. Just stand there, glare, and keep your mouth shut.”

He wore gloves to hide the bruises and swelling and walked to Arla’s left, a step behind. He had to consciously stop himself from lengthening his stride and pulling ahead. He was used to leading. He did not follow.

_ You do now, _ he reminded himself. He had chosen this. This was his punishment, the payment for his crimes. He was a scavenger now, just like Rey had been. He would scrape a living from the wreckage of the war that he reveled in.

The scrapyard was at the edge of the marketplace, surrounded by an electrical barrier. The guard at the gate waved them through with a wordless grunt. Arla threw him a sarcastic salute. The owner of the scrapyard was a Toydarian. He sat on a small hoverchair under a lean-to, yelling at one of his employees while he waved a datapad in one hand.

The employee hurried away, chastened, and the Toydarian caught sight of them. “Eh, eh!” he called happily. “Arla Lobitayn! Back so soon!”

“Gotta work hard to make a living, Ido,” Arla replied, baring her fangs in what he assumed passed for a smile. “I’ve got some good scuppa for you.”

“Sure, sure, you always do,” Ido agreed, stroking the straggly, white hair that grew from his chin. “How’s that pretty thing of yours?”

“Still can’t cook for krag,” Arla said lightly.

Ido shook his head. “You got robbed, I tell you.”

Arla laughed and shrugged one shoulder. “She has other talents.”

Ido’s black eyes glittered. “Yes, yes, I bet,” he said with a leer. His gaze fell on the tall Human standing behind Arla, his most intimidating scowl stamped on his features. “Who’s this lug?” Ido demanded.

Arla hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “This is Solo. He’s on my crew.”

“Yeah?” Ido looked him up and down. “Didn’t know you were hiring dumb muscle.”

“He’s a mechanic, too,” Arla said. “Not as dumb as he looks.”

He narrowed his eyes, wondering briefly if Arla had actually meant that insult or if she was just bantering. He let it slide, for now.

“Alright, alright, to business,” Ido said, waving a three-fingered hand. “What you got for me, huh?” Arla pulled a data chip out of her pocket and handed it over. Ido plugged it into his datapad and scrolled through the rough inventory.

“Business is good, eh?” Ido said without looking up from the datapad. “Seems like you got some good scuppa.”

“Lot of salvage sites going around,” Arla replied.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ido agreed. “Problem is, market is going down. Scuppa not worth the same anymore.”

“That’s blarrg shit and you know it,” Arla retorted. “The First Order strip mined whole planets for materials to build their fleet. Some of these metals you can’t find anywhere else.”

“No one’s building ships anymore,” Ido countered.

“Maybe, but there’s gonna be a lot of building in general soon,” Arla said. “Always happens after a war. People try to rebuild.”

“Not out here. Nothing changes on the Outer Rim. It’s the same scuppa, different day.” Ido looked over the itinerary again. “I can give you ...twelve thousand. And that’s generous.”

“The saulda from the conductor cables is worth eight thousand on its own,” Arla said, crossing her arms in a way that made her biceps bulge. “Twenty..”

“Are you trying to rob me blind?” Ido pressed his hand to his narrow chest. “You know I gotta turn a profit.”

“You’re not the one risking your ass to find the scuppa,” Arla retorted.

He’d lost interest in the conversation several minutes ago. Haggling was beneath him. He’d always simply taken what he wanted. He let his attention wander, expanding his senses on instinct to feel for hostile minds. One being with particularly loud thoughts caught his attention. He blinked and focused his attention on this newcomer.

It was a Rodian, male and older. He was delighted, and his excitement was easy to read. He’d just bought valuable scrap metal and engine parts for his business venture. He had been hired to rebuild an outpost on Dantooine. He’d gotten many such offers and had had to hire new contractors.

He frowned and withdrew from the Rodian’s mind. Arla and Ido were still haggling.

“I’m telling you, no one’s buying now,” Ido said again. “This stuff, it’s just lying around.”

“That’s fine,” he said before Arla could reply. “If you’re not able to sell it, we can just go straight to Kaal Plooma. I’m sure he’d be happy to cut out the middleman and give us a fair price.”

Ido’s watery eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grumbled.

He raised his eyebrows. “Really? Okay. Well, why don’t we just go ask him? He’s just right over there.” He pointed towards the back of the salvage yard, where a Rodian could be seen directing droids in loading crates onto a freight pusher.

“No, no, that was a one-time deal,” Ido protested, scratching his bulging stomach. “It’s the first sale I’ve made all month!”

“Not according to Kaal Plooma,” he went on. “He’s bought from you three times in the last week. He’s also referred two of his contractors to you for materials.”

“Well, if there’s that much of a demand for salvage, you can definitely afford at least eighteen thousand,” Arla jumped in without missing a beat.

Ido gave him a long, hard look. “I don’t like this one, Arla. He knows too much. Maybe things he’s not supposed to know. Fine, I’ll do seventeen. But that one is not allowed back here. I don’t like him.” Ido stabbed a short finger at him. “He’s trouble.”

He kept his face neutral while Arla collected payment and a receipt. Ido would send a few droids to offload the cargo from the  _ Blue Horizon _ . As they left the salvage yard, Arla gave him a sidelong look.

“How’d you know about the sales, Solo?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I hear things. Pick up on things.”

“Yeah?” Arla asked, raising her brow ridge. “You pick up on things, huh?”

“Yup,” he replied, not offering anything else.

“You’re an odd one, Solo,” Arla said, shaking her head.

“I’ve been called worse.”

xXx

When it came to fine dining, the space port didn’t have many options. Most food-related establishments were bars, where meals were an afterthought. But there was a small café in the middle of the food market where, according to Eena, the food wasn’t completely terrible.

After two weeks of flight rations, he was willing to eat just about anything. The café was dark and cramped, but they managed to get a table by a narrow window. He didn’t recognize anything on his plate, but it smelled appetizing and there was a lot of it.

“If I knew you were gonna eat this much, I woulda never brought you on,” Arla said, amused.

“Oh, leave him alone,” Eena pushed Arla playfully. “He’s a growing boy.”

That gave Arla pause. “Wait,” she said, frowning. “You’re not… you  _ are _ of legal age, aren’t you?”

He swallowed the food in his mouth. “I’m twenty-seven,” he said shortly, and went back to eating.

Arla turned to Eena. “What’s the legal age for Humans?”

“Eighteen, I believe,” Eena replied.

“Ah, good. I don’t want to mess around with child labor laws.”

He frowned and looked up. “You know, that Weequay was right. The New Republic is gone. There  _ aren’t _ any laws.”

“That piece of scrag  _ wishes _ ,” Arla muttered. “From what I’ve heard the Resistance army is trying to restore what order they can and help systems reestablish their own governments. From there it’s anyone’s guess.”

He chewed slowly. That would explain his dream of Rey in the middle of a battle. She must be leading peacekeeping missions with the Resistance. His chest ached at the thought of her. Sometimes it felt as if he was unfinished, as if he were missing huge chunks of himself. Sometimes he thought he might only have a deep, yawning emptiness inside of him.

He was distracted from his thoughts by the approach of an Ithorian. It was not unusual to see an Ithorian at a far-flung spaceport, but it had been a long time since he’d personally had any contact with one. He put his fork down and straightened, sending a small tendril of thought towards the newcomer. Ithorians were notoriously difficult for anyone but Ithorians to read, but he got the vague impression that it meant them no harm.

“Greetings, friends,” the Ithorian said in their characteristically deep, stereo voice. “Please find the day well.”

Arla inclined her head. “Hello, friend. How can we help you?”

“Do you have drinks I could purchase?” the Ithorian asked.

“Um…” Arla frowned, clearly puzzled by the other’s question. “I don’t think--”

“She’s asking if she can buy us some drinks,” he said quickly, and turned to the Ithorian. “If it is easier, I understand your language. I can interpret.”

The Ithorian bobbed her flat head.  _ “Thank you, kind child,” _ she said.  _ “It is rare to meet those who understand our words.” _

“My mother insisted that I learn many languages,” he replied. “We would be honored if you would join us for a drink.”

The Ithorian pulled a chair away from an empty table and carefully seated herself.  _ “I am called Rosneen Olarta En.” _

He tapped himself on the chest. “My name is Ben Solo. This is Arla Lobitayn and Eena--” He hesitated, glancing over at the dark-skinned Twi’lek.

“Syruna,” Eena finished.

He repeated their new acquaintence’s name for his shipmates. Rosneen insisted on waving down the lone server and ordering a drink for each of them. Ithorian business was always conducted over shared food or drink.

_ “I have heard from others that you are good and honest people,” _ Rosneen went on once their drinks had been served.

“Well, we try,” Arla said dryly.

Rosneen bobbed her head slowly.  _ “We need a salvager’s services. We are looking for a lost ship.” _

“We?” Arla questioned. “Who do you represent?”

_ “The Ithorian colony of Ydun, in the Maridun system.” _

“How did you lose a ship?” Eena asked, her hands curled around her cup.

_ “Our colony is very young. We still receive settlement ships from Ithoria. One Coruscant standard year ago, we expected to welcome a ship of young breeding pairs. The ship never arrived. With the unrest in the galaxy, we could not launch a search for the missing ship. Now that the war is over, we hoped we could learn their fate.” _

“You don’t have the resources to launch your own investigation?” he asked. He’d ordered a cold, tea-like drink. After the hangover he’d woken up with the morning after the t’amtúk, he’d decided to stay away from alcohol for the time being.

_ “Settlement ships are dismantled to add to our herd cities,” _ Rosneen explained.  _ “We have no space-faring ships of our own. I purchased a passage to Ademus from a passing tradesman.” _

Arla chewed on her lip and glanced from him to Eena. “How much would you be paying for this job?”

_ “Our colony has raised five hundred thousand credits to finance this search.” _

When he relayed Rosneen’s words, Arla, who had been in the process of taking a drink, choked and spluttered until she was able to safely swallow. Her face flushed and she tried to discreetly cough to clear her lungs.

Rosneen turned her dewy brown eyes to study the Twi’lek.  _ “Is this amount not sufficient?” _ she asked worriedly.

“Ah, no, it is sufficient,” Arla said quickly.

Rosneen relaxed.  _ “We would provide fifty thousand credits initially to provide funds for the search itself. The remaining four hundred fifty thousand will be paid upon our receipt of the flight computer of the lost settlement ship.” _

“That sounds fair,” Arla agreed immediately. “I think we’d be happy to take on this job for you.”

Rosneen insisted on accompanying them on their new mission, which Arla wasn’t going to argue about, not considering what the Ithorian was willing to pay them. Arla used the money Rosneen gave them up front to completely overhaul the entire ship, which took almost three days. She also bought a month’s supply of non flight ration food, much to Eena’s delight.

He personally supervised the repairs, assisting when necessary. He remembered, as a child, taking apart any device he could get his hands on so he could see how it worked. He’d disassembled a mouse droid when he’d been six, scattering the pieces over his bedroom floor. His uncle had found him crying in frustration, unable to put it back together again.

He’d always been slightly afraid of his uncle. He was an aloof man, not particularly affectionate. He rarely visited their home on Chandrila, busy with his work. So at the tender age of six, the sight of his uncle standing over him with a deep frown stamped on his face sent him into hysterics.

His uncle had sighed deeply and then sat cross-legged on the rug beside him. “Ben, it’s okay. I’m not angry.” His uncle had spoken softly, reassuring him until he had subsided to wet, teary hiccups. “It’s not broken. We can fix it together.”

And they had, his uncle teaching him the names of the various parts, showing him how it worked. When they finished and turned the droid on, his uncle had rewarded him with a wide smile. “Good job, Ben. You’ve got the Skywalker touch.”

He’d held onto that for a long time; the smile on his uncle’s scarred face, the twinkle of blue eyes.  _ The Skywalker touch _ . 

Maybe that was one of the reasons it had hurt so much when he woke up that night to find his uncle standing over his bed, lightsaber raised to attack.

But those memories were not useful to him now. He had work to do. 

xXx

There was very little chance that the settlement ship that they were looking for would still be at the coordinates Rosneen provided. Still, it was a place to start. The four of them crowded into the cockpit once they arrived. He and Eena leaned over the back of Arla’s chair so they could see the nav computer while Rosneen hung back a respectful distance.

“There’s a few systems close by they could have gone to,” Arla announced. “If they had engine problems, they might not have had a choice but to set down wherever they could.”

Eena stretched uncomfortably to tap her finger on the screen. She had a significantly shorter reach than he did, and had unfortunately chosen the side farther away from the computer. “Well, out of the six that are close by, there’s only two that are inhabitable. That should narrow things down.”

_ “I am afraid it will not,” _ Rosneen interjected.  _ “Our settlement ships carry enough supplies to last for up to five years. If necessary, the ship itself can land on a planet’s surface and act as a habitat for this time.” _

He repeated this information for his crewmates and Arla muttered a Twi’lek curse under her breath. “Okay, so we need to eliminate them one by one.”

“Which one is the closest?” he asked.

“This one,” Arla replied, tapping the nav screen. “Some backwater junk world called Jakku.”

A cold shiver ran down his spine. Surely the universe could not be so cruel. The galaxy was a mind-bogglingly large place, but somehow he had managed to find himself here, of all places. He remembered that his uncle had told him once, a very long time ago, that there are no coincidences, that the Force worked through all things.

This was, however, a particularly bad joke.

He sighed heavily. “There’s an outpost on Jakku, near the equator. Sector 17B-4, I think. If our lost ship is on Jakku, they’ll have heard about it.”

Arla turned to look at him. “You’ve been to Jakku before?”

He grimaced. “Once. Briefly. My… friend. Rey. She was from Jakku.”

Nothing more was said on the matter, thankfully, and Arla plotted a course to Jakku.


	5. Bridging The Gap

They landed just before sunset, the hottest part of the day. He immediately broke out into a sweat when he left the climate-controlled interior of the  _ Blue Horizon _ . He shaded his eyes with one hand, surveying the ramshackle collection of tents, huts, and lean-tos known as Niima Outpost.

This had been her home. She had lived here for over a decade. It had shaped her, stripping away any weakness, any vulnerability, molding her into the unstoppable force she had become. 

Still, the difference between their childhoods was stark. She had grown up in abject poverty and was still compassionate. He had everything he needed given to him and yet…

_ You offered her the galaxy, _ the Darkness at the back of his head whispered.  _ You offered her everything she could have desired, but she chose to be nothing. _

He gritted his teeth and studiously ignored the voice, falling into step behind Arla as they set out for the outpost. Rey was far from nothing.

She was  _ everything _ .

Niima Outpost was populated by the standard variety of races that most backwater outposts were. Mostly Humans, a Duro or two, a Devaronian, a few insectoid races, and that one random Bith that managed to show up absolutely everywhere.

No Twi’leks. And definitely no  _ female _ Twi’leks. 

Arla could not, by anyone’s standard, be considered “eye candy”. Most female Twi’leks seen outside of Ryloth, if not enslaved, capitalized on their attractiveness to pretty much all oxygen-breathing beings. Arla did not.

Her lekku were tattooed, yes, but not with slave tattoos. Black and blue pictographs detailed the battles she’d fought in, the enemies she’d killed, the monsters she’d defeated. Her solid black eyes gave her a flat, animalistic look which was not helped by her artificial fangs. She was tall and bulky and wore practical clothing that was not intended in any way to make her attractive.

All in all, he rather liked her, and it no longer grated on him to walk a half-step behind her, letting her take the lead. In fact, now that he thought about it, it was almost a relief. Let someone else take charge. Let someone else be the center of scrutiny.

_ Submission is weakness _ , the seductive whisper told him.  _ You were born to rule. You were meant to be magnificent. _

Not anymore, he told himself firmly.

They attracted a fair amount of attention from the citizens of Niima Outpost. They glanced furtively at the newcomers, conversing in whispers and darting off to spread the word. Strangers could only mean one of two things: violence or money. He was hoping it wouldn’t be the former.

Arla abruptly changed directions and approached an old Human woman who crouched under an open-sided tent, using sand to scrub carbon from metal scraps. Her face was darkly tanned and wizened, and she had lost all her teeth. She didn’t look up at them until Arla knelt beside her.

“Hello, grandmother,” Arla said, if not gently, at least politely. “Do you speak Basic?”

The old woman squinted suspiciously at Arla, then mumbled unintelligibly. 

Arla reached into her pocket and pulled out a smuggler’s credit chit, probably worth enough to feed the woman for a week. She placed the chit on the rickety table in front of the woman. “For your cooperation,” Arla told her. “If you can’t answer my questions, you may still keep it.”

The old woman’s hand darted out faster than a sand scuttler, snatching the chit and secreting it away under her tattered robe. She mumbled a reply and this time he caught some of the words.

“I am looking for a ship that might have put down near here,” Arla said. “A local annual or more ago. An Ithorian settlement ship.”

The old woman shook her head and muttered to herself. She gestured to the other side of the outpost where a line of scavengers had formed in front of a permacrete structure with a single, barred window. Arla got to her feet, bushing sand away from her trousers.

“What did she say?” he asked in a low voice.

“She hasn’t heard anything about an Ithorian ship,” Arla replied. “But she said that the scavengers would know, since they strip the wrecks.”

“Might get expensive to ask everyone,” he pointed out.

Arla licked her fangs thoughtfully. “Probably. But it would save us from having to survey the whole planet.”

“True,” he agreed. “But information bought isn’t always reliable.”

“You have a better idea?” she challenged.

He had a few, none of which he particularly liked. One he  _ definitely _ didn’t like and would never speak out loud. “I want to try something before we start throwing around credits,” he said at length. “Flashing money like that will most likely get us into trouble.”

“You’re afraid of breaking a few skulls?” Arla challenged.

“I’m not in the mood to  _ kill _ anyone,” he retorted. “And trust me, if it came down to it, that’s what it would take.”

Arla shrugged. “Fine. We’ll try it your way. If it doesn’t work we can always throw around a few credits.”

He ignored the faint but distinct bite of sarcasm and took a deep breath. It had been a long time since he’d tried anything like this. Over a decade, in fact. The last time had been at his uncle’s academy, and the voice of the Emperor in his head hadn’t contributed to his success.

He turned around slowly, searching for what he needed and not finding it. “I need… I can’t do it here,” he said at length. “I need somewhere… quieter.”

Arla looked around with a raised brow ridge. “Not exactly a bustling hive of activity,” she observed.

He grimaced. “There’s a lot of…” he trailed off, unsure of what word to use. “Hopelessness,” he finally settled on. “It hangs over everything. I need… cleaner air, I guess you can say.”

Arla crossed her arms and studied him for a moment. Her expression was impossible to read but her thoughts were clear. She was curious most of all, and strangely not suspicious. There was something else, buried deeper, but he dared not reach for it lest he accidentally hurt her.

After all, he was not a man known for subtleties.

“Fine,” she said again. “Where do we need to go?”

He knew where he wanted to go, a place he was certain would carry at least a faint taste of hope. It took him a moment to get his bearings. He’d only seen this place in passing, a glimpse here and there, buried amongst dreams and nightmares.

Arla didn’t say anything as they set out away from Niima Outpost, heading Northwest. The sun was nearly fully set, now, but the desert would not be dark, lit by uninhibited stars and three moons. The sand dragged at his boots as he trudged along. The dunes were shallow here, probably the reason it had been chosen for the outpost. In any case, he was grateful not to have to scale the mountainous dunes he could see in the distance.

Still, it would probably be a while before he’d be able to get all the sand out of his clothes.

They’d walked less than five kilometers when they reached their destination. The AT-AT was still where she had left it, untouched by scavengers but not the desert. Without anyone there to sweep away the constant deposit, the hovel was buried under a deeper layer of sand.

“What is this place?” Arla asked.

He stood a few meters from the half-covered door. He wasn’t sure how to answer. “Safety,” he said at length. “Hope.” He stepped forward but hesitated again. This had been her home. Her sanctuary. What would she think of his presence here?

He had another, ulterior motive for coming here, and not just to facilitate their search for the Ithorian settlement ship. He had wanted to come here since Arla set their course to Jakku. Finally his feet could be convinced to move forward. He had to scoop and shovel the sand away from the door before he could push it open. The door was actually the belly hatch of the walker, so he had to duck carefully to enter.

The interior was pitch black so he pulled the hand beacon from his toolbelt and flicked it around. The hovel was furnished spartanly; a table, a pallet of tattered blankets, and a few plastene crates of what initially looked like junk.

Her presence was faded, barely discernible, but he could still feel it settled over everything like a layer of dust. He knelt briefly by the sleeping pad, placing his hand, palm flat, on the blankets. He could sense her stronger here, but it was stale and quickly dying.

The beam of light in his hand flicked against the far wall, and he saw the neat rows of scratches etched into the metal. He’d seen this, too, but only in her darkest moments of despair. She did not have many of them. He used his teeth to remove the glove on his right hand so he could run his fingertips along the marks.

Here. Here she was strongest. Her patience, her stubbornness, but most of all her hope that someday someone would come back for her. He sat down on the hard, sandy floor, crossing his legs in the traditional pose. He reached out his hand again, pressing his fingers against the wall. 

It took longer than it should have for him to calm his thoughts enough to enter a trance. He hadn’t exactly been practicing recently. He could sense, though, a roiling storm in the distance; a seething, hungry dark mass that waited a time to strike.

He turned away from that part of him, away from the question of whether the Darkness would ever leave him. For now that was a distraction. He had a more important task at hand.

Deep in the hollow chasm of his chest, he found the frayed, weak threads of the Dyad bond. He plucked at them experimentally. There was no responding movement. So he grasped them as firmly as he could and began to pull, straining with the effort. As thin as the threads were, they resisted him, as if someone was on the other end, pulling back with all of their might.

After several minutes of struggling, he released the threads to catch his breath and gather his strength. He clearly wasn’t going to get anywhere by brute force. He took a few deep breaths. Well, if he couldn’t pull the threads towards him, then he could follow them to the source.

So this time, instead of pulling, he put his hand on the threads, and moved forward.

She was not as far away as he had feared. In fact, he stumbled upon her pretty quickly. One moment he was focused inward, casting his consciousness along the bright, thin trail of the Dyad bond. The next…

Rey sat facing him on a sun-warmed boulder, a water canteen raised to her lips. She was frozen, unmoving, her light brown eyes fixed on his face. He offered her an uncertain smile. He hadn’t expected this to actually  _ work _ .

He scrambled to his feet, brushing sand off his clothes. “Hi,” he said, unable to think of anything else.

She remained perfectly still for a few more heartbeats, then she slowly lowered the canteen, never taking her eyes off him. “You’re dead,” she said in a cold, flat voice.

He reached up to rub the back of his head. “Not… exactly,” he said slowly. This wasn’t going how he had pictured it. “I mean, I think I  _ was _ , but now I’m… not.” He shrugged. “And I’m not sure how.”

Rey got to her feet, slowly, gracefully, like a lothcat uncoiling from their vantage point before lunging toward their prey. She approached him, wary, as if he might attack at any moment, and reached out towards him until her fingertips rested on his arm. She pushed against him slightly, testing his solidity.

Her eyes widened. “You’re… here?” she breathed, and grabbed his arm with strength that shouldn’t have been surprising. “You’re really here? How?” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you  _ sunburnt? _ ”

He laughed. “Yeah, probably,” he admitted. “I’ve been outside a lot the last few weeks.”

“Weeks!” she exclaimed, and her expression abruptly darkened. “It’s been  _ weeks _ !’ She released his arm but only so she could push him, hard, both hands against his chest. He rocked back on his heels but stood his ground.

“I thought you were  _ dead _ ,” she hissed at him, furious. “You brought me back and then you  _ died _ !” She pushed him again and he caught her wrists, keeping her at arm’s reach. “I told everyone you saved me, that you died a hero! And it’s been  _ weeks _ !” she yelled, trying unsuccessfully to pull out of his grasp. She kicked him in the shin instead, the pain startling him enough to release her. She whirled away out of reach, turning back to face him with her arms crossed. She glared. He stared back.

“Well?” she demanded after a long moment of silence. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

He blinked. “Does this mean you’re happy to see me?” he asked.

The torrent of invectives that poured from her mouth would have peeled the paint off the side of a star liner. He only recognized about a third of them. She stomped around in a small circle, cursing him to the high heavens, before ending up in front of him again, her eyes blazing.

“You are  _ the _ most aggravating, stupid,  _ selfish _ , foolhardy, hotheaded  _ man _ I have ever met!” she growled at him, jabbing her finger into his chest to emphasize each word.

Her ire did not bother him in the least. Nothing she could have done would have ruined his mood at that moment. He felt light, as if Jakku’s gravity was suddenly, drastically reduced. “Yeah, probably,” he agreed.

That seemed to take the wind out of her and she crossed her arms again, glaring up at him. “Where are you?” she asked. “Because you’re not here. I mean…  _ here _ here.” She pointed to the floor.

He opened his mouth, intending to tell her everything, when Rey looked over her shoulder, her attention caught by something only she could see. “I’ll be right there,” she yelled. She turned back toward him, lips parting to ask another question.

She vanished, as abruptly as if a switch had been thrown. He stood alone on the gritty metal floor of the abandoned hovel on Jakku, the hand beacon the only illumination in the darkness. “ _ Kriff, _ ” he spat viciously, and slammed his fist into the wall of days.

When he emerged from the converted AT-AT a short while later, Arla had found a seat on the edge of one of the walker’s feet, her blaster resting on her knee. She looked up when he ducked through the hatch. She gave him a guarded look.

“You talking to someone?” she asked mildly.

“Sort of,” he replied. “The settlement ship isn’t here. It never was.”

Arla nodded slowly, then got to her feet. “Alright. Let’s head back. No need to waste time. We have five other systems to check.”

He gave her a wary look. “That’s it?” he asked. “You’re just going to take my word for it?”

She tilted her head at him. “Well, you haven’t lied to me yet,” she said. “Don’t see why I can’t.”

He frowned. Everything he had learned about Arla over the past weeks told him that she was  _ not _ a trusting person. Her view of the galaxy was that anyone who wasn’t Eena was probably going to screw her over at some point. This was  _ very _ out of character.

“You don’t want to know  _ how _ I know that?” he pushed.

She crossed her arms. “Same way you knew about people buying scuppa at Ido’s, I imagine,” she said in that same mild, incurious tone. Her black eyes glittered in the starlight, impossible to read, as usual.

It took him a moment to realize what she wasn’t saying. “You know who I am, don’t you?” he asked quietly.

Arla’s thin lips curled upwards at the corner. “I do,” she confirmed.

“How?”

“Well, when we first found you, I did a search on Human males named Ben Solo. Top result was a reward for information on the whereabouts of one Ben Solo, son of Senator Leia Organa-Solo.” Arla gave him a look that questioned his intelligence. “ _ Everyone _ knows who Leia Organa-Solo is. And I know who her brother is.”

He flinched involuntarily at his mother’s name. He had tried not to think about her. He had tried not to think about any of his family. They were all gone, now. And it was his fault. But if he let himself dwell on that, the guilt would drown him, and then he would have no defense against the Darkness.

“So now what?” he asked.

Arla frowned. “What do you mean?” 

“What do you plan on doing with me?”

“I don’t plan on doing  _ anything _ with you,” Arla replied. “You’re on my crew. You work for me for as long as you want to or until I get tired of your ugly face.”

He blinked. His initial realization wasn’t completely true. Arla knew who Ben Solo was. She didn’t know that he was also Kylo Ren.

“Does Eena know?” he asked.

Arla shook her head. “I figured since you didn’t volunteer the information, you didn’t exactly want it known. You went missing ten years ago. I imagine, seeing you now, that it’s because you wanted to go missing. You appear to be of sound mind and able to make your own decisions. Beyond that, I don’t care. Your past is yours, Solo. It’s none of my business.”

He wasn’t sure how to describe the emotions that writhed around his chest. The Darkness rejected them as weakness, tried to make him feel shame, but there didn’t seem to be anything  _ bad _ about these feelings. Just unfamiliar.

“Thank you,” he said at length.

Arla shrugged. “Let’s go. We’ve wasted enough time here.”

He took one last look at the hovel. He hoped it wouldn’t be the last time he saw her.

xXx

It was not, in fact, the last time he saw Rey. The next time was less than a day later. They had just reached the next system in their search; it was known colloquially as the Novus System and contained four planets, all uninhabitable ice balls. Arla secured them in geostationary orbit over Novus Prime. She’d been awake for almost two days and needed to get some sleep before they started their search.

He’d managed to kip for a few hours on their way to the Novus System, so he was in the galley trying to put something together that would be more appetizing than anything that Eena could manage. Eena was good at a lot of things. She was a damn fine medic, for one. But she was not a good cook by any stretch of the mind.

He had the basics of cooking down, but he hadn’t actually had to cook anything for himself in a very long time. Add to that Rosneen did not eat any kind of animal byproduct and he had quite the challenge ahead of him. 

She arrived as he peered at the various and somewhat random items he had pulled from food storage and placed on the counter by the cooktop. The bond, normally dormant and empty now, pulled taut between them. He spun around to find her a few steps away, looking almost as surprised as she had the first time.

“It worked,” she blurted, her eyes wide.

“It did,” he agreed, unable to hide his smile. “Hi.”

“Hello,” she said almost breathlessly. “I, uh, I’ve never actually  _ tried _ to connect before, so I wasn’t sure how it would work, but I’m here!”

“You are,” he confirmed. “How… how are you?”

“ _I’m_ just fine,” she said. “How are _you_?”

He blinked a few times. “I’m...fine?” he said slowly, almost a question.

She stepped closer. “You  _ died _ just a few weeks ago,” she said earnestly. “You were really  _ dead _ . I felt it. I felt you…” She reached out hesitantly and rested her fingertips on his chest, over his heart. “You were gone,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

He took a risk and placed his hand over hers. She didn’t pull it away. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “Just needed a few days of rest, that’s all.”

She frowned and tilted her head back so she could meet his gaze. “What happened?” she asked, and then pulled her hand free so she could gesture between them. “I mean, before I could sense you all the time and we kept finding each other even when we didn’t want to, but now…” She trailed off and pressed her hand flat against his chest, fingers spread.

“I can only sense you when I’m here,” she finished.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. She was  _ touching _ him. She  _ chose _ to touch him. Her presence sang in his head and in his veins like a drug. For the first time since Exegol the hungry emptiness in his chest eased. “It was like that when I woke up.”

She frowned, not removing her hand. “You… woke up. On Exegol?”

He nodded. “I’m not sure how long I was… unconscious. It was dark and I was alone.”

She snatched her hand away then, stepping backwards. He wanted to follow, to take her hand, to soothe away the distress he could feel pouring off of her.

“I left you,” she said softly, rubbing her forehead. “I just  _ left _ you there. You were hurt! Your leg… And I just  _ left _ .”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he told her reflexively, even though it kind of was. He just didn’t want her to blame herself for it.

“I should have waited,” she insisted. “I should have taken you with me.”

He nodded. “Yeah, and where would that have put me?”

“What?” She blinked, confused.

“In a cell, probably,” he pointed out. “If I was lucky. Executed, if I wasn’t.”

She opened her mouth to protest but could not find an argument. “Where are you?” she asked instead.

“Space,” he replied.

She gave him a withering look. “ _ Where _ in space, idiot?”

He shrugged. He wasn’t sure why he was reluctant to tell her where he was. He’d been so eager yesterday. “Nowhere special.”

“Are you safe?” she asked, her expression softening.

“Yeah. I am.” He closed the distance between them and carefully, slowly took her hand in his. She looked down for a second, biting her lip, before she met his eyes again. “I’m safe,” he said again. “I’m just… “

“Not ready,” she finished for him.

“No,” he admitted. “There’s still so much I… I need time. To figure things out.”

She licked her lower lip. “I understand,” she replied, a note of sadness in her voice. She took a deep breath. “Can I… can we… Can we see each other?” she asked hopefully.

“You want to see me?” He couldn’t help the surprise or the spike of sheer pleasure at the question.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “I do. I want to make sure you’re doing okay.” She squeezed his hand. “Ben, I--”

And then she was gone again, the hunger in his gut yawning open, deep and empty. He clenched the hand that had held hers until his still-healing bones ached. It wasn’t enough. This tenuous, unreliable connection was not enough. He had a feeling it never would be.

He relaxed his hand, shaking it out and wincing at the pain. She didn’t deserve this, he thought to himself. To be bound forever to  _ him _ . She was the last Jedi. She would rebuild the Order. A shining beacon of hope to the galaxy. She deserved more than to be shackled with a war criminal, a dark Jedi. He was nothing more than a gaping wound in the Force and he would never be what she needed him to be.

In a sudden fit of anger he seized a metal cup sitting on the counter behind him and flung it with all his strength. It bounced off the frame of the door, narrowly missing Eena. She flinched away from the cup, far too late to have avoided it had it been heading her way.

“Everything okay?” she asked warily, looking around the galley.

“Fine. Sorry.” He smothered the anger, shoving it down into his Darkness. Try as he might he could not seem to fully control it. He had drawn from its power for so long now that it refused to be contained.

“Do you need help?” Eena offered, gesturing to the food scattered on the counter.

He took a slow, deep breath. “Yeah,” he said at length. “Yeah. I could use some help.”


	6. A Cold Discovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! I am, indeed alive!
> 
> For those of you who do not also read my Marvel fiction, you may not be aware that my wife was in a car accident about a month and a half ago where she broke three vertebrae. She is progressing very well, but it did cause a significant gap in my writing. And then, of course, COVID-19 happened. I work in emergency services/public safety, so I am considered essential.
> 
> Due to the current situation, and because some of you may be under quarantine and unable to leave your homes, I understand the need to escape and be distracted. So in the attempt to facilitate this I have decided to start posting shorter chapters more often in the hopes of providing more reading material.
> 
> If you are interested in keeping in contact with me outside of AO3, I am on Reddit as u/slizabeth89 and on Instagram as @sinead_smith_3 . Please feel free to reach out to me for any reason. I can answer basic questions about COVID-19 provided you are in Texas, USA, preferably the DFW area.
> 
> Thank you, and stay safe.

Novus Prime was as cold and inhospitable as advertised. He wore a heavy, fur-lined parka, gloves, mask, and goggles and he could still feel the bite of cold seep into his skin. Arla was even worse off. During their hurry to prepare for their new mission, she had been unable to find cold-weather gear suitable for Twi’leks. Ryloth was a relatively temperate planet, and winter was hardly a problem there. So she had been reduced to wrapping strips of thick fabric around her lekku in layers in an attempt to protect them from frostbite. 

They would have preferred to scan the uninhabited ball of ice and rock from orbit for anything resembling a ship, but apparently Novus Prime was rich in several different metallic minerals that interfered with the  _ Blue Horizon _ ’s instruments. Eena had made a pointed comment about how nice it would be if that had that probe droid she’d been wanting, but Arla pointedly ignored her. Eena and Rosneen opted to stay with the ship, which Arla had instantly agreed to. Eena did not have the strongest constitution and Ithorians were completely unsuited for arctic temperatures. 

He shoved his goggles up onto his forehead and pressed the binocs to his eyes. They stood on a rocky ridge, the ground sloping sharply below their feet to a vast, icy valley. A thick layer of fresh snow made traversing the slick ice slightly easier, but Arla was clearly already starting to flag.

Human metabolism allowed the species to adapt to many, even some extreme environments. It was one of the main reasons Humans were the most widespread species in the galaxy. So while he was uncomfortably cold, he wasn’t in any danger of hypothermia. Besides, he also had the Force. It was an early lesson, dating back to his first weeks at the fledgling Academy. Before one could master the Force, one must first master themselves.

“See anything?” Arla demanded through gritted teeth. She had her gloved hands shoved in the fur-lined pockets of her parka.

“Not sure,” he replied, equally shortly. “Binocs are picking up something on the far side of the valley. North north west about eleven degrees.” He handed the binocs over for her to take a look and replaced his goggles. It was full daylight and the glare off the snow was blinding. Without the goggles, they could easily go blind in less than an hour.

Arla grunted. “Could be nothing,” she said.

“Could be something,” he pointed out.

She lowered the binocs. “True. We can take the  _ Horizon _ into the valley and hike in from there. Save us some time.”

He pushed his sleeve back so he could check his datastrap. “We have about thirteen hours of daylight left.”

Arla patted his shoulder as she turned back to the ship. “Then we’d better get moving.”

They had to land the  _ Blue Horizon _ five klicks from their target due to the uncertain stability of the ice. Arla grumbled about it until they started moving, and then saved her breath. They ice had been broken into massive shards, some up to ten meters, and then refrozen, making the landscape treacherous to pass. 

He set metal spikes into the ice as he went and Arla collected them behind him. They paused every so often so she could pass them back. It went like this for upwards of two hours. Then he set a spike and heard an ominous  _ crack _ .

Startled, he looked up at the ice shard towering over his head. It trembled for a moment and then, with another  _ crack _ , began to list towards them. Without thinking, he lunged backwards, knocking Arla off her feet and out of danger. The move cost him precious seconds, and he looked up again to see the monolith moments away from crushing him. 

He threw up his hands and  _ pushed _ , opening himself up to the Force in what felt like forever. The Darkness rushed in with it, intoxicating, electrifying. For a terrifying heartbeat the ice continued to fall as he wrestled with the Darkness.

“Solo!” Arla yelled from behind him.

The monolith slowed, then stopped, centimeters from his raised palms. It easily weighed five tons or more. A few months ago that would have hardly fazed him but that was when he reveled in the Darkness. It was all he knew. Now he tried to reject it, and he had forgotten what it was like not to drink deep from its power.

“Ben!” Arla called. “Ben, are you okay?”

His muscles strained from the effort of holding the ice and blocking the Darkness. He felt paralyzed, suspended between two immovable forces.  _ I can’t do this _ , he thought frantically.  _ I’m not going to make it. _

_ “I’m here,” _ an unfamiliar voice replied.  _ “I’ve got your back.” _

He felt a presence touch his mind and in his desperation he grabbed hold with all his strength. The Darkness’ assault seemed to lessen.

_ “That’s it,” _ the voice encouraged.  _ “You can do this. You’re strong. You’re a Skywalker.” _

_ Who are you? _ He asked, confused but grateful. He heard a distant chuckle in reply.

_ “I’m family, kid. And I’ll always be here for you.” _

The presence faded, but his defense against the Darkness didn’t. With fresh resolve, he pushed back against the weight of the ice, lifting it up and out of their path before letting it crash back down, shattering into pieces as tall as he was. 

He realized that he’d been holding his breath the whole time and he sucked in a lungful of frozen air, inducing a coughing fit. He bent forward, bracing his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. Arla grabbed his shoulder, leaning down to rip the wrappings from his face.

“Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth,” she instructed sharply. “The air needs to warm before it gets to your lungs.”

He forced himself to calm, to follow her orders. Gradually his head began to clear, oxygen returning to his bloodstream.

“Are you alright?” Arla asked.

“I think so,” he said, straightening. He pulled the wrappings back over his mouth and nose. “Just haven’t done that in a while.”

He couldn’t read her expression behind the goggles and her own wrappings. “Are you…” Her question trailed off. “How much training did you have?” she asked instead.

He shrugged, not really willing to try to explain the nuances of his training. “Enough,” he replied. He rolled his shoulders to loosen the muscles. “To survive, anyway.”

Arla nodded slowly. “You ready to keep going?”

“Yeah. We’re killing daylight.”

They reached the target site without further incident. It was buried halfway into the valley wall and frozen into place, covered in a rime of frost so thick that at first it wasn’t identifiable.

“That’s a ship,” Arla observed, gazing up at the visible hyperspace boosters protruding from the slope approximately twelve meters above them.

“I can see that,” he replied dryly. “Judging by the size of the engines, it looks like a frigate.”

“Been here a while,” Arla added. “Probably longer than a year.”

“Probably,” he agreed. “Still should check it out.”

Arla tightened the knot in the wrappings on her right lekku. “Yup,” was her only reply.

They used the spikes and, on more than one occasion, the Force to scale the slope up to the buried cruiser. After half an hour of searching, Arla found a hatch they could force open to make access to the ship. He went first, lowering himself into the dark, cold void inside. 

The hatch opened to a cramped maintenance shaft that he suspected led through the reaction core of the hyperdrive engine. It was designed to protect maintenance tech from radiation spillage while still giving them access to critical components.

He took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind, to empty himself of emotion the way his uncle tried to teach him so many years ago. He met with partial success and reached out with his senses, stretching them as far as he could in search of danger.

“It’s all clear!” he called up through the hatch. Arla dropped in next to him.

“It’s not any warmer in here,” she said, pulling the wrappings away from her mouth. “But at least we’re out of the wind.”

He grunted in reply and set off down the shaft, keeping alert for any sudden changes. They had to force the door at the end of the shaft as there was no power and it had been left in a locked position. He held it open while Arla climbed through. She appeared a moment later with a long piece of metal debris to prop the door open. He clicked on his hand beacon once he was out in the passage beyond, Arla doing the same. The small beams of light flicked over the corridor. It was completely empty, devoid of any sign of the crew.

“I don’t recognize this ship class,” Arla said with a frown. “It’s not First Order, that’s for sure.”

He ran his beacon slowly over the wall. There was no carbon scoring, no blast marks. “It’s not Imperial, either,” he added. 

“So it could be civilian?” 

“Maybe. Not a lot of civilian ships this size, though. Except for pleasure yachts or settlement ships.”

“Definitely not Ithorian.”

“Definitely not.”

They kept conversation to a minimum as they pushed deeper into the ship. It was an unspoken consensus that they would first head to the bridge and then go from there. He paused, however, when his beacon revealed lines of Aurebesh printed on the wall. Arla saw him stop and doubled back.

“What does it say?” she asked.

He looked at her with surprise. Arla had never seemed illiterate to him, capable of running her business with ease. She must have accurately interpreted his expression because she gestured to the symbols impatiently. 

“I didn’t learn Aurebesh until I was an adult, and I don’t recognize this dialect.”

He frowned and turned back to the writing. On second examination, he realized that it was an old dialect.  _ Very _ old. 

The galaxy measured time in two different ways. The first was specific to each inhabited planet. Time tended to pass slowly on planets, with civilizations lasting hundreds or even thousands of years. The second way time was measured was collectively, in relation to whatever galactic government was in place.

The Old Republic lasted millenia, the Empire, only twenty-three years. But in that time, the Empire had almost completely wiped out all memory and record of the Old Republic. They had been so ruthless in their suppression that even beings who had been alive during the Old Republic claimed no memory of that time.

He ran his hands over the Aurebesh letters, wiping away a thin, delicate layer of frost. “It’s from the Old Republic,” he said quietly. “I--I’ve seen some of the records that survived the Empire.”

Arla shoved her goggles up her forehead. “So this ship is  _ old _ , then, isn’t it?”

“I’d say so,” he agreed. “Sixty standard years. Maybe more.” He tapped the writing again. “This says ‘All personnel must report to designated escape pods in the event of an evacuation.’”

“That sounds military,” Arla said. “Could this have been a warship?”

“Maybe, but that would mean it was a…” He cut himself off in surprise.

“A clone ship,” Arla finished, awe in her voice.

He recoiled involuntarily from the wall. If this was indeed a clone attack ship, then it was very likely to have carried at least one Jedi. After his experience out on the ice, he wasn’t looking forward to encountering any other lingering presences.

“Do you  _ know _ how valuable this thing could be?” Arla went on, her eyes wide and glittering the meager light of the hand beacons.

“We should go,” he said tightly, stepping back the way they had come. “We have a job and this isn’t it.”

“We should at least find out what happened to it,” Arla insisted. “If it crashed here, there’d be more damage, not to mention corpses.”

“They probably evacuated,” he replied. “It doesn’t matter. We’re wasting time.”

Arla narrowed her eyes. “What’s gotten into you?” she demanded. “You scared?”

“No,” he snarled, a surge of rage at the suggestion bubbling up from his gut. He gritted his teeth and worked to fight it back down. “I don’t think it’s safe,” he growled, his jaw still clenched.

“Did you… sense something?” Arla pushed.

He really wished she didn’t know the truth about him, about his abilities. He wished he could pass his misgivings off with a comment on the age of the ship or the approaching sunset. But Arla wasn’t stupid. She’d see right through him. She’d done it a few times before.

“Sometimes, things… linger,” he tried to explain. “People, or presences. Especially strong ones. And some people, sensitive ones, can…  _ sense _ them. It’s… not always a pleasant experience.”

Arla frowned, and then rubbed her chin a few times. “I want to find out what happened to this ship,” she said firmly. “If nothing else to satisfy my own curiosity. If you’re not comfortable being here, I won’t think less of you if you head back and wait outside.”

The rage still boiled in his gut. His fists clenched until the leather creaked. He was  _ not _ a coward. The blood of the Sith ran through his veins and he ran from  _ nothing _ .

Except that wasn’t true, was it?

He’d been running his whole life. Running from his responsibility, from the Skywalker legacy. He ran from his family the moment they discovered the darkness within him. Even now he was running, incapable of facing the truth of his circumstances: he was broken and empty, stained with the blood of millions, and unworthy of either redemption or forgiveness.

_ “It’s time to start running toward something, kid,” _ spoke the presence in his mind.

The shock of the intrusion was enough to cool the fire of his anger.  _ Stay out of my head, _ he snarled back. He was answered with a smug laugh.

_ “Hey, you invited me here. I’m just answering your questions.” _

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes as he raised his mental defenses, hoping that might keep this alien presence out. He heard laughter again, but it faded out into silence. He opened his eyes again. “I’ll stay,” he decided. “You might need someone to watch your back.”

They reached the bridge without finding any other clues as to the ship’s fate. The bridge was as empty as the rest of the frigate and equally dark. Their suspicions were confirmed, though. This was, indeed, an Old Republic-era attack ship.

“Can you restore the power?” Arla asked as he examined the bridge controls. She was a decent pilot, might even be considered a  _ good _ pilot, but she was not mechanically inclined. In a pinch she could change a fuel cell and purge the cooling system, but major repairs or overhauls escaped her.

“If the auxiliary power is still functioning,” he replied as he crawled under a bank of controls. He fumbled his multitool from his belt so he could pry the access panel open. He’d never worked on a ship this old, except for the  _ Falcon _ . No one knew how old that piece of junk was. Not even Lando knew. But even though he’d never worked on this class of ship, the principles of physics and energy conversion remained the same.

Red emergency lights slowly illuminated the bridge a moment before the panel he was working on activated with a soft trill. He scrambled back to his feet and examined the screens. 

“Pah!” Arla exclaimed in frustration, gesturing to the streaming lines of data. “I can’t read any of this.”

He didn’t reply, brow furrowed as he tried to translate as quickly as he could. His mother had insisted he learn the Old Republic dialect, but he hadn’t used it in years. “Looks like everything is functional,” he said after a few moments. “Everything’s just been powered down.”

“So there’s no damage at all?” Arla asked.

“No, none.”

“Can you get everything on line? Could we get it out of here?”

He shook his head. “Ships like this were never meant to make landfall. Exposure to heavy gravity can compromise the hull. If we tried to use the sublight engines to break it free of the ice, we’d rip it to pieces.”

“Kriff,” Arla muttered.

He found the ship’s log after a moment of searching. “Oh, great,” he mumbled. “It’s encrypted.”

“Can you make a copy?” Arla demanded.

“Um…. yeah. You have a datacard?” 

She pressed one into his hand. He copied the log over and tucked the card into a pocket.

“Are you going to be able to decrypt that?”

“Maybe. I used to break old encryptions when I was a kid for fun. My… my uncle’s astromech was an Old Republic model and it was used during the Clone Wars, so it gave me a few lessons.”

“That’s a very old astromech,” Arla observed. “It’s still functional?”

“Debatable. Depends on what your definition of ‘functional’ is. It got crotchety in its old age.”

“Your uncle never wiped it?”

He snorted. “R2 was my uncle’s best friend. Pretty sure he’d have killed anyone who tried.”

“You keep referring to him in past tense,” Arla pointed out.

That gave him pause. It’d been less than a year since his uncle had confronted him on Crait, since he’d become one with the Force. The First Order hadn’t made it known that Luke Skywalker was dead. In fact, he hadn’t told anyone in the First Order at all. As for the Resistance, he had no idea what they had done with that information.

“He’s dead,” he said shortly. 

“Oh.” Arla seemed taken aback. “I… I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. He swiped his glove across watery eyes. “We should get back before Eena starts stress-cooking.”


	7. Binary Suns

The cockpit was the only place on the  _ Horizon _ that had the equipment he needed to decrypt the log. Arla, not interested in watching him hunch over the console for hours, left him to it, opting instead to de-ice the hull of the ship to ensure they could safely take off when they were ready.

Rosneen stopped in to ask some questions about their discovery. If she was perturbed that they were taking time away from their search for the lost settlement ship, it wasn’t apparent in her emotions. She seemed resigned to the fact that their search would not discover survivors, and as such time was not an essential aspect. Once her curiosity was satiated, she too left him in peace, saying she would prepare them all a meal and a hot drink.

He hoped she meant caf, because the trek out to the Clone Assault Cruiser and back had drained him. Once he could hold a ship in midair against the thrust of its engines without breaking a sweat. But now, cut off from the endless depths of the Dark Side, his well of power was shallow.

He straightened to relieve a pain in his back and scraped a hand through his hair. It was getting long enough that he struggled to keep it out of his face. He either needed to cut it, or acquire hair ties.

The thin, silver threads of the Dyad bond hummed with a sudden tone that could only mean one thing. He felt his mood lift instantly and he looked around, wondering where she would appear.

“Hi,” she greeted, standing in the cramped space between pilot and copilot’s chair. “You look terrible. Are you alright?”

He chuckled softly at her blunt honesty and rubbed the back of his head. “I’m okay. A little tired, maybe.”

She leaned forward with a frown. “Are you sleeping?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “A little. I’m fine. It’s just been a long day.”

She looked around but she, like him, could see nothing of his surroundings. “Where are you?” she asked.

“Novus Prime,” he replied, because there was no harm in it. There was no possibility she could make it there before they left.

Her frown deepened. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

“It’s an uninhibited ice ball near the Outer Rim. Like Hoth, but as far as we can tell, there aren’t even Wampas.”

Her brown eyes focused sharply on his face. “‘We’?” she echoed. “Who else is with you?”

He wondered how to answer that for a moment. “Uh, I joined a crew,” he finally explained. “They found me on Exegol. Hired me on.”

She looked surprised. “Do they… Do they know who you are?” 

“They know I’m Ben Solo,” he replied quietly.

She smiled at that, and reached over to touch his arm lightly. “Good. I’m glad you’re not alone.”

He tried to return the smile, but he couldn’t make it stay on his face. “How--uh--how are you doing?”

Rey rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. “If they had told me what it would be like  _ after _ we won, I wouldn’t have stuck around,” she muttered. She grimaced. “Sorry. I… I’m not good at politics. And that seems like that’s all everyone’s doing these days. Poe is always in negotiations with representatives with New Republic systems and no one can agree on anything. It’s been  _ weeks _ and they haven’t even decided on a system for the new capitol yet.”

He flinched at that. He had not commanded Starkiller base, but that didn’t make him any less culpable. He remembered the moment when he felt Hosnian Prime shatter to pieces. At the time the destruction had been intoxicating. Now, in memory, it was nauseating.

“I’m sorry,” Rey said softly, tightening her hold on his arm. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing I don’t deserve,” he said grimly. “Your other friend--the, uh, defector. How is he? Is he with you?” He really didn’t care that much about the former Stormtrooper. It just seemed like a good way to change the subject.

“Finn,” Rey provided, her mood improving. “Yes, he is. We’re actually working right now on trying to track down the family and homeworlds of the Stormtroopers who’ve surrendered to us.”

He tilted his head. “Stormtroopers are surrendering to the Resistance?”

Rey rolled her eyes again. “We’re not supposed to call ourselves the Resistance anymore. They say it sends a wrong message or some such drivel. But yes, a lot of them have been. With the First Order gone, they have nowhere else to go.”

He nodded slowly. “Good,” he said. “Makes it less likely someone will try to put the Order back together.”

She didn’t answer, choosing to study him for a moment with an intense gaze. “I’ve started training Finn, too. Better to make my mistakes on him than some poor youngling.”

“Train him?” He repeated. “He’s Force-sensitive?”

“He is. Not as strong as you or anything, but he has his moments. I should have realized it sooner. He always seemed to know exactly where I was and what I was thinking.”

He scratched his jaw. He’d had very minimal contact with this Finn. There was the brief skirmish on Starkiller base after the Stormtrooper defected, but prior to that he hadn’t noticed him at all until the raid on Jakku. He’d sensed conflict, fear, which is why he’d recommended to Phasma that he be sent for reconditioning.

The thought of another Force-wielder so close to Rey, though, fed that raging hunger in his gut. That there was someone else in tune with her thoughts and emotions, someone else she might turn to for comfort and support… It was all he could do to hold his tongue. 

It was not his place to control Rey. It never had been. The Dyad bond was meant to make them partners, equals, and now they barely had that.

“Ben.” The sound of his name jerked him from his darkening thoughts. Rey was watching him again, rubbing her hand against his arm. “Where did you go just then? You felt so cold.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m still working through… things.”

“It’s not easy to turn away from the Dark Side,” she said. “It will always call to you.”

He grimaced. “I don’t really need platitudes right now, Rey.” He pulled his arm away from her hand, but only so he could grasp it in his. Her hand was warm, her fingers and palm calloused and rough. It was small in his, but strong, sun-darkened skin glowing against his pale coloring.

“It’s just what I read in the Jedi Texts,” she said softly. “I don’t really know anything about the Dark Side except what I’ve seen from… from Palpatine. And Snoke.”

“And me,” he said bitterly, his grip on her hand tightening.

“Ben.” When he didn’t meet his gaze, she cupped his cheek with her free hand. “ _ Ben. _ ”

There was no hatred in her, no bitterness. He had no idea how she could have gone through the horrors she had survived and emerged… unscathed. 

“You saved my life,” she told him. “I felt… I can  _ feel _ you. The Dark Side never owned you. Not completely. There was always something holding you back.”

_ It was you _ , he wanted to tell her. Her blazing beacon of light that set everything around her aflame. Her unstoppable will, her immoveable convictions. He’d been trapped by her gravity from the moment he saw her and she’d consumed him ever since.

But he couldn’t make that confession. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Someday she would come to her senses and realize that he would never be worthy of her, that he could never be the partner that she needed, and she would leave him forever.

And he would let her go. It would kill him, but for her sake, he would let her go.

“I’m pretty sure Dameron would have killed me if I hadn’t saved you,” he said instead. “And if he didn’t, my mother would have come back to personally strangle me.”

Rey frowned, dropped her hand from his face. He ached at the loss of her touch, the loss of her warmth. “Have you seen her?” she asked.

He blinked. It took him a few seconds to realize what she was talking about. “My mother?” he clarified. “Have I  _ seen  _ her?”

She nodded. “I saw Master Skywalker--Luke. Your uncle. After Kef Bir I went back to Ach-to. I burned your TIE. Tried to burn the holocron. I was going to run, try to get as far away from Palpatine as I could. Master Luke talked me into staying, to confront Palpatine. And then, in the temple on Exegol, I could hear them, the Jedi, they were all in my head, but now… I haven’t seen anyone.”

He listened to her in shock, his jaw slack. He’d heard stories from his uncle during his time at the new academy, how his uncle’s old masters returned after death to guide him, but he hadn’t really believed him. The voices in his head, Palpatine, always told him that death was an ending. It was final. Which was, apparently a lie, but still.

“You  _ saw _ Luke Skywalker?” he demanded.

Rey nodded. “Yes. He was a… Force ghost, he called it. He said that many Jedi became one with Force when they died, and their spirits lived in the World between Worlds. Not that he explained what that was or how it was possible.”

He finally released Rey’s hand, reaching up to rub his forehead. His fingertips caught on the scar that bisected his face. The voice he’d heard, out on the ice. He had sensed that it was not evil, not born of the Dark Side. There was nothing of Palpatine's foul presence about it. If what Rey said was true, it was possible that he was  _ not _ , in fact, going insane.

But this raised a thousand entirely  _ new _ questions.

“Is something wrong?” Rey asked, touching his arm again. He wished she would stop touching him. He craved it like spice, needed it like oxygen. Her touch set his skin aflame and lit up every nerve. He was in danger of becoming unable to live without it, and then… well, then he feared for his sanity, and her safety.

“No,” he said gruffly, dropping his hand and breaking contact. “I haven’t seen her. I haven’t seen anyone.”

“Oh.” She seemed disappointed by his answer. As if she thought that his family, who were all dead because of him, would care to interrupt their eternal rest to appear to him, that he was even worthy of their time or attention. Their blood was on his hands. He was covered in it, covered in red, drowning in it, and he would never be clean. Nothing he could ever do, no matter how hard he worked or what he sacrificed, would bring them back, would relieve him of this sin. He had murdered his family. He had destroyed their legacy. All his life he had wanted recognition, fought for it, ripped it from the corpses of his enemy. Now he was nothing and he would become nothing. The galaxy would forget him, forget the Skywalker name and everything they fought to achieve. He had sacrificed everything for power and now he had nothing left. The darkness consumed everything and soon it would consume him, too. He was destined to nothing but oblivion.

Rey’s expression hardened suddenly and she leaned forward, seizing his face in both hands. “Ben, you’re spiralling,” she said sharply. “You  _ can’t  _ think like that. That’s how the Dark Side wins. It breaks you down to nothing and makes you think that you have no other choice. You have to  _ fight _ it. You have to believe that you  _ can _ .”

He was frozen, captured by her hands and the strength of her gaze. “I--I’m just so tired,” he whispered, moisture pooling in his eyes. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“I won’t let you give up,” she told him fiercely. “I  _ can’t _ lose anyone else. Do you hear me, Ben Solo? I  _ won’t _ lose you, too.”

“You’d be better off--” he tried to tell her, but she never gave him the chance to continue. Before he could protest, before he could pull away, her hands tightened on his face and she crushed her mouth against his.

It was not gentle. It was not an act of affection. It felt like resuscitation. 

There was very little skill involved. His experience was minimal and he imagined Rey’s was, as well. But her lips were soft and her mouth was willing and he could only hope she didn’t taste his desperation. Her hands moved to his hair, her blunt nails scratching his scalp and sending a bolt of intense sensation down his spine.

He reached out without thinking, his hands finding her waist, pulling her closer. She came willingly, climbing into his lap, and her closeness, the weight of her against him, very nearly made him lose his mind.

Her breath was hot and stale but he didn’t care; his was probably worse. He drank her in: the heat from her body, the smell of sun and sweat on her skin, the taste of fruit and caf lingering on her tongue. She filled all of his senses and he reveled in it.

And for a brief, breathtaking moment, the Dyad bond blazed to full life, locking them together like binary suns.

_ “Ben.” _ He could hear her in his mind, as clear as if she spoke aloud.  _ “Promise me.” _

_ Anything. Name it _ , he agreed without question. If she asked for his life he would, in that moment, gladly fall on her lightsaber.

_ “Live. Promise me that you’ll live.” _

He hesitated, and paid dearly for it. She was gone before he could answer, her warmth and weight vanishing as if she’d never been there at all. He was left gasping, aching, too consumed with the loss to even spit out a curse.

But, for the first time since he woke up in the temple on Exegol, he did not feel alone.


	8. New Friends and Old Allies

He found the others in the galley; Rosneen was in the process of preparing a meal. All three women froze in place to stare at him. He waved the datapad in his hand. “I got it,” he announced. “I decrypted the log.”

Eena glanced down at her wrist chrono and then back up. “Have you been working on that this whole time?” she asked, sounding worried.

He frowned, blinking grit from his eyes, and raked a hand through his hair. He really did need to do something about it… “Uh, yeah.”

“We got back from the Clone ship over twenty hours ago, Solo,” Arla informed him.

“We… we did?” He asked dazedly. After Rey left he’d thrown himself into the decryption to distract himself, from her absence and the gnawing ache deep in his gut. “I, uh, I didn’t realize…”

Eena crossed over to him and gently took his arm. He looked down at her hands, confused. She was  _ touching _ him. People didn’t just  _ touch _ him. They tried to hurt him or they cowered from his presence. They certainly did not guide him gently to the round dining table and push him down onto a low-backed stool. 

“I cracked it,” He told her. “The encryption, it was an old one. Clone War era. They actually used it during the early days of the Rebellion against the Empire, which is how I cracked it. They called it Fulcrum and I think--”

“Ben,” Eena interjected softly. “You’ve been awake for almost two day-cycles.” Rosneen walked over to place a mug on the table in front of him. The aroma of caf overwhelmed him for a moment. He felt dizzy and light-headed.

“You should eat something,” Arla said briskly, retrieving a foil package of protein paste from a cabinet. “Drink the caf. Get this down. Then tell us what you found.”

The paste was tasteless and lumpy. It was designed to supplement a meal otherwise lacking in nutrients, not to be eaten plain. Still, he tore open a corner of the packet and sucked out a mouthful of the contents. The caf was over brewed and bitter but he gulped it down as soon as it was an acceptable temperature. He almost instantly felt better.

“Okay,” Eena said, taking the seat next to him. “Tell us what you found.”

“Right.” He pushed the datapad into the center of the table and activated the holo display. “From what I can gather, the assault cruiser we found was involved in the Siege of Mandalore at the very end of the Clone War.”

“Siege of Mandalore?” Arla echoed. “Not the  _ Purge _ of Mandalore?”

He shook his head. “No. That came later, after the Empire rose to power. At the end of the Clone War, part of the 501st Clone division was sent to Mandalore to assist Bo-Katan Kryze in liberating the planet from… uh… “ He lost his train of thought and reached out to manipulate the display.

“It doesn’t have a name, but a tyrant who had killed the previous ruler and taken over,” he went on. “After the siege, the cruiser we found, the  _ Valorous _ , was recalled to Coruscant and never arrived.”

“What happened?” Eena asked.

“The log is incomplete,” he replied. “The last entry just says they were setting down on a nearby planet for repairs. Then… that’s it. The log ends.”

_ “You found nothing else?” _ Rosneen asked, her long, bony fingers wrapped around her own mug. She favored a bark tea that smelled like rich, dark soil and fresh mushrooms. Not unpleasant, but not to his tastes.  _ “Nothing that told you the fate of the crew?” _

“No,” he said, shaking his head again. “I--uh--I did find a personnel manifest. It listed everyone on board. And the… the troop transports were launched. All of them.”

“So they evacuated when they couldn’t repair the ship,” Arla said firmly. “Solves that mystery. We can come back later and break it down for salvage.”

“No,” he said again. “There’s no record of them transmitting a distress beacon or hailing a rescue ship. Evacuation protocols weren’t activated. The captain didn’t even lock down the command systems.”

Eena gnawed on one fingernail absently. “So. What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But there was a Jedi on the ship. And there was no record of her anywhere afterwards.”

_ “The Jedi were driven to extinction by the Empire,” _ Rosneen pointed out.  _ “No doubt she perished with the others.” _

“But she  _ didn’t _ ,” he insisted. “The Inquisitors kept a record of all the Jedi killed by the Empire, and this one was never found.”

“How do you know all this, Ben?” Eena asked softly. “Imperial records like that wouldn’t be available for just anyone.”

He froze, jaw slack, cursing himself at his oversight. The lack of sleep and the caf had made him careless.

Arla rolled her eyes. “Oh, for the love of Kikalekki’s warm bosom, Eena!’ she exclaimed in frustration. “Have you  _ seriously _ not put it together yet?”

Eena glared at her partner. “Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot, Arla,” she hissed. “If you have something to share, out with it!”

Before he could protest, if he  _ had _ been planning to protest, Arla made her announcement. “He’s Ben  _ Solo _ . The only son of Leia Organa-Solo, leader of the Rebellion and former president of the New Republic. The nephew of Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi and savior of the galaxy.  _ That’s _ how he knows.”

He could feel the pressure of the Darkness in his mind as Arla spoke the names of his family, the  _ only _ family he had, all of them sacrificed to his lust for power. It was tempting, what the Darkness offered: relief from the guilt, the grief, the deep self-loathing that tore open the yawning hollow in his chest.

“Oh,  _ stars _ ,” Eena gasped. “Are you serious? Is that true?” She turned her wide, red eyes to him. “You’re really  _ him _ ?”

“Yeah,” he said wearily. “I’m him.”

“Sweet mother,” Eena whispered. “So you are-- I mean, you can--”

“I’m a force-wielder, yes,” he replied tersely. “But I’m not a Jedi. I never finished my training. The new academy… it was attacked.”

“By the First Order. I remember hearing about it,” Eena said breathlessly. “I had  _ no _ idea. You poor child! No wonder you didn’t want to go home.”

She pitied him, he could sense it. She practically reeked of it. His stomach turned violently and he shoved himself to his feet, staggering when the galley threatened to spin around him. “I have to… I feel…” he couldn’t finish either sentences and chose to flee instead, retreating to the safety of his cramped but private cabin.

It felt as if he couldn’t breathe properly, as if the respiration system on his helm had malfunctioned. Even when he gulped down great lungfuls of air he still felt as if he was drowning. The walls of his cabin constricted around him like a cage. He broke into a sweat, his body temperature spiking. All of his senses screamed that he was in danger, that he was trapped. He needed to escape, to get to safety. It didn’t matter where, it just needed to be  _ away from here _ .

He came to himself slowly. He had no idea how much time had passed. The cold was the first thing that penetrated his blind panic. He struggled to the surface of consciousness and took in his surroundings. He stood on the surface of Novus Prime, almost knee-deep in snow. Mountains rose on either side of him, white caps giving way to volcanic rock and sand. An icy, bitter wind pierced his clothing, warm enough for space travel but completely unsuited for this arctic environment.

The  _ Blue Horizon _ was nowhere to be seen.

“Fantastic,” he muttered, wrapping his arms around his abdomen in a futile effort to conserve body heat. He looked around again, hoping to find some kind of shelter from the wind. The light from the rising sun glittered blindingly on the fresh snow, making it difficult for him to make anything out.

Squinting against the bright assault to his eyes, he checked his wrist comm. Well, he checked  _ for _ his wrist comm. He vaguely remembered removing it sometime during the night. It had irritated him and he had kept hitting it on the flight console.

“ _ Siqsa kintik nun wodza won _ ,” he swore feelingly.

He could try reaching out, searching for the familiar presences of the Twi’leks. He  _ could _ , if he’d had anything to eat in the last fifty hours other than protein paste and caf. He knew the fatigue and weakness were from hunger, and if he didn’t find shelter soon, they would kill him.

He heard a voice over the sinister hiss of the wind and raised a hand to shade his eyes, scanning the piedmont of the closet mountain range. A dark-clad figure was barely visible, waving a hand over their head. He turned toward them without hesitation, trudging through the snow. His teeth rattled in his head with the force of his shivering by the time he reached the stranger. He could no longer feel his extremities.

The stranger wore suitable clothing for the weather: a heavy parka with a fur-lined hood that rose in two narrow points, amber-tinted goggles, and a cloth mask stiff with frost. They were not as tall as him, but that was hardly unusual.

“You’re lucky it wasn’t snowing,” the stranger observed, voice muffled through the mask. “You’d be soaked through. Follow me.”

He was too cold to protest, and followed his new friend to the lee of a massive boulder where a thermal tent waited for them, protected from the wind. A portable spark heater warmed the interior, and the relief from the cold brought tears pricking in his eyes.

“Here,” the stranger said, draping a blanket over his shoulders. “I have food, too, if you’re hungry.”

He clutched the blanket to him and stared at the stranger as they sat opposite him. “Who are you?” he asked warily.

The stranger reached up and pulled their hood back. As soon as he saw the white-striped horns he knew the stranger was a Togruta. They pulled their mask down and removed the goggles. His savior was a woman, well past middle-age. She had orange skin and white facial markings. Her large eyes were indigo, and sharp with intelligence.

“ _ I’m _ here to help you,” she replied, sounding vaguely annoyed. “And you’re late. I was out here all night waiting for you.”

He frowned at that. “You… knew I’d be here?”

She nodded briskly and pulled a container out of the corner, prying off the lid and reaching inside. Retrieving a couple of packaged flight rations, she tossed one in his direction. He made no effort to catch it and it fell in his lap.

“A little bird told me you’d need a way out of a bind,” the Togruta said, not answering the question at all. She tore open her own ration and took a bite. “Eugh. I forgot how bad these things taste.” 

He made no move toward his own food. He tried to formulate a question, failed, and tried again. But he was too cold to gather his thoughts properly.

“I know, I know, you’ve got questions,” the Togruta said, waving the ration bar in one hand. “Everyone does. It’s always ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ No one ever seems happy to see me.” She shoved the rest of the ration bar into her mouth with a grimace and chewed silently for a few seconds.

“Right. So  _ you’re _ Ben Solo, obviously,” she went on after she swallowed. “No introductions needed there.” She reached into the container and pulled out a thermal flask. “Here. Drink this. It’ll help you warm up.”

Whatever the liquid was, it wasn’t caf. It burned the back of his throat and he sputtered, trying not to spit it back up.

The Togruta laughed. “Strong, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s a concoction we used to drink during the war. Chase the cold right out of you.”

“Why are you helping me?” he demanded, recapping the flask and setting it aside.

“Because I promised your grandfather I would,” she replied, leaning forward.

His spine stiffened, shock chasing his shivers away. “You know-- you  _ knew _ my grandfather?” he asked softly.

She smiled, her face softening. “I did. He was the closest thing to a brother I ever had.” Her expression hardened again. “Anyway, he asked me to be here to help you out, so here I am. Not like I’m surprised. Skywalker boys aren’t the brightest bunch. I swear your mother was the only one with any brains.”

He wanted to protest, to defend himself, but he couldn’t. After all… she wasn’t wrong. “Who are you?” he asked again. She smiled crookedly.

“My name is Ahsoka Tano. I was your grandfather’s apprentice.”

xXx

Rey did not have a home. In a way, she never really did. Jakku was never  _ home _ . It was simply where she had been hidden, where she had scraped a living from the wreckage of war ships. Ach-to might have become home, if she had stayed longer. But without Master Skywalker’s presence, the planet had little significance for her.

Chandrila was most certainly  _ not  _ home. She was only here because Poe asked her to come, to help wrangle the senators that refused to agree on  _ anything _ , including a new capital for the reborn republic. She wasn’t unhappy to be there, per se. Chandrila was a beautiful planet with wondrous cities. But it wasn’t where she  _ wanted _ to be.

“Hey.”

She looked around at the interruption and caught sight of Finn standing at the door to the balcony. “Hi.”

“You alright?” Finn asked, walking over to her. He leaned his elbows onto the railing. “You, uh, you feel… distant.”

Rey sighed. “Sorry. I guess I kind of abandoned you back there.”

Finn smiled back at her. “It’s okay. I get it. It just seems so…”

“Petty,” Rey finished. “ _ Stars _ . All they want to do is argue about  _ nothing _ . It’s like they have no idea--”

“What we had to do to get here,” Finn finished. “Yeah. Everything seemed so much simpler when we were just shooting at the bad guys.”

Rey nodded. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing anymore. The Republic needs leaders, politicians. I’m just a junk rat from some backwater desert planet.”

“And I’m just a First Order defector,” Finn reminded her. “And Poe is just a hothead, spice-running pilot. It doesn’t matter where we’re from, Rey.”

“It matters what we do,” Rey said, finishing Leia’s oft-repeated mantra. “But I don’t  _ know _ what to do.”

“Won’t the Force tell us?” Finn asked.

Rey groaned. “I don’t know if the Force works like that.” She struck the railing with her open hand. “There’s just still so much I don’t know. And now there’s no one left to show me. Us. Show  _ us _ .”

Finn smiled sadly. “I guess we’re just going to have to figure it out together, then.”

She could feel his sincerity. He’d always been such a beacon of hope, even when she was drowning in despair. Somehow he never lost that spark. “Yeah. I guess so.” She took a deep breath and centered herself again. “Where’s Poe?”

Finn rolled his eyes. “The Rodian senator tried to strangle the senator from Naboo, and then Strasse had to step in…”

“And Poe is having to stroke egos.” Rey sighed again. “How did Gunnar Strasse get picked as the head of the Republic Guard?”

“He knew people who knew people.”

“Typical.”

They fell into an easy silence, simply enjoying the comfort of each other’s presence. Finn was the first friend Rey had ever made, and sometimes she thought they had been made to be best friends. Maybe they had been. The Force worked in mysterious ways.

Heavy footsteps heralded Poe’s arrival, but both of them sensed him from far away. He grumbled under his breath as he joined them on the balcony, pressing tightly against Finn. The former Stormtrooper reached up and massaged the back of Poe’s neck. 

“Hey. You okay?” Finn asked in concern. Poe replied with a long groan. Finn nodded gravely. “Yeah. Same.”

“I just don’t know how the General did this,” Poe said, his head lowered under Finn’s ministrations. “How she kept them in line, managed to get them to do  _ anything _ other than squabble about the  _ stupidest _ shit.”

“Well, she’d been doing it since she was a teenager,” Rey offered. “And… well, she’d done it all before.”

“Yeah,” Poe said, sounding defeated. “Not to mention she was a  _ Jedi _ .” His head shot up and he turned to look shrewdly at his companions.

“ _ No! _ ” Rey and Finn exclaimed at the same time.

“Worth a try,” Poe muttered under his breath.

“You should get some rest,” Rey told him. “You’ve been pushing yourself too hard.”

Poe straightened with another groan. “What about you?” he asked her. “You haven’t had a day off since…”

Since she got back from Tatooine, Rey knew he wanted to say, but didn’t. Poe was trying to give her space, to give her time to sort everything out. Losing Leia, killing her  _ grandfather _ , dying and being revived. She knew how difficult it was for him. He always wanted to jump in, to fix problems. Still, she appreciated his efforts.

“I think we  _ all _ need some downtime,” Finn declared. “Starting with food and a good night’s sleep.”

“Sounds amazing,” Poe sighed. “Rey, you wanna join us?” He blinked, realized what he had just said, and turned bright red. “For  _ dinner _ ,” he sputtered. “Join us for dinner.”

Finn laughed and bumped his shoulder into Poe’s. Rey smiled ruefully.

“Thanks, but I think I’m going to meditate for a bit first,” she told them. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She watched them leave fondly. They’d made their relationship official shortly after the Battle of Exegol, though Rey had known for weeks. Finn was not good at concealing much of anything. She was happy for them, she really was. They were a family now, the three of them.

She just wished she could stop lying to them.


End file.
